大象传媒

The day war broke out I was evacuated with my mother and father to great Yarmouth. My father was a school teacher and the whole school was evacuated there. My mother used to go round checking that everyone was alright in their new homes. We returned to Gravesend just before the blitz. During this time we had to sleep in our own underground shelter in the back garden, our strawberry bed had to be dug up much to dad's dismay. I had the top bunk in the shelter and dreaded the snails that were on the roof just above me. We became very organised in our air raid drill so much so that one night we heard a bomb coming down and dived into a room doorway for safety not realising we had left my baby sister still on the table in her mosses basket. Father was an air raid warden and one night called me to come out of the shelter to watch the spectacular display of the incendiary bombs coming down; no way would I come out of there, I was too frightened.
we used to watch the battle of Britain dog fights from our backgarden, with the vapour trays in the sky. It was so exciting to us kids, collecting shrapnel from the ground. Later during the war the area was surrounded by barrage balloons placed their to bring down the flying bombs. The boy next door and I kept count of how many flying bombs we had seen, he had a larger tally than me as he was older and allowed to stop up later.
Once during a family outing we thought we heard gunfire but dad decided to drive on. moments later a bus driver stopped us and we joined his passengers sheltering in a ditch for safety as bombs were dropping on Penshurst Castle nerby.

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