大象传媒

I was 11 years old when the second world war started and I lived in Southampton with my mother and father, my two sisters and my brother.
On 1st September 1939 I was evacuated with my school to Ferndown in Dorset. I stayed there until early in 1942 when it looked as though the air - raids on Southampton had ceased and my parents thought it would be safe for me to return home. They were never more wrong.
During the night of 21st/22nd June 1942, six weeks after I returned home, the air - raid warning siren went and it wasn't long before the German bombers arrived in full force. We all had to rush down to the Anderson shelter in the garden, and the raid was so severe that we couldn't risk taking the time to get dressed. My mother even forgot to pick up the little attache case in which we kept our valuables, insurance policies, etc.
We all sat in the shelter listening to the horrendous noise going on outside. It was terrifying. After a while my father, who was a policeman said, "I'll wait till this one's gone over and then I'd better go and get dressed and report to the station." That was not to be. Suddenly there was an awful thump, everything around us shook and the ground seemed to rise up and come back down again. My father looked out of the door and said, "There's not a thing left standing here." Our house had sustained a direct hit and there was nothing left but a huge pile of rubble.
When the siren sounded the "All Clear" we were able to climb out of the shelter after my father cleared the doorway for us. It had been partially blocked by the end of one of our beds which had landed there. Once out we had to make our way across the rubble as best we could. It was pitch black because no lights except torches were allowed and the rubble was full of dangerous objects, especially broken glass.
We were taken to a place called a Rest Centre, it was actually the local Methodist Church which had been fitted out with some rudimentary furniture such as campbeds and trestle tables etc. We spent the rest of the night there and after we had been given breakfast the next morning we were taken by car, still in our nightclothes, to a clothing depot run by the Women's Voluntary service, (now the W.R.V.S) to be given some day clothes. They weren't very generous.
The Local Authority had a duty to re - house people who had lost their homes but because a lot of houses had been destroyed in previous air - raids, plus the fact that no new building had been done since the war began, there was a severe housing shortage. In order to fill the need they had requisitioned all the houses standing empty in the town, whether the absentee owners liked it or not. We were the first family to be given one and there was an article about us in the "Southampton Evening Echo." We couldn't move in for a few days so we had to stay with my grandmother.
We had no furniture of course, so to start us off, the Local Authority supplied us with some on a sale - or - return basis. It was dreadful stuff. The cupboards were made of very crude wood and finished with just a coat of flat stain, and the table was a piece of unvarnished white wood with folding metal legs. The beds consisted of a piece of coarse sacking tacked onto a rough wooden frame. Never - the - less, we had to sleep on them for several months. Floor coverings were in very short supply so we had to put up with bare floor - boards in the bedroom for years. In fact, new furniture of any sort was almost unobtainable so in the end my father bought mostly second - hand stuff which he found in the shops when he was out on the beat.
In due course my father received compensation from the Government. In order to get it he had to submit a list of everything we had lost. It was a daunting task and took several weeks to do, bearing in mind that even small items like toothbrushes cost quite a lot of money when you have to buy them all at once for every member of the family.
A few weeks after we were bombed out the demolition men came to clear the site. We all took our turn at standing by in case they uncovered any of our precious possessions and two discoveries were made. The first was our dirty laundry which we had put in the copper in the kitchen before we went to bed on that fateful Sunday night and the second was the coal in the coal - shed. As soon as it was uncovered my father made us take it by the bucketful to our new house (about fifteen minutes walk away) because we couldn't risk leaving it there overnight, and we certainly couldn't afford to waste it because it was rationed. I will never forget that day, there was thunder and lightning in the air all day and it was the day of the catastrophic raid on Dieppe.
Despite all our trials and tribulations we had a lot to be thankful for. We all survived the ordeal and none of us was injured, which was a miracle really because we couldn't have been more than twenty yards from where the bomb fell. I have to say though that when I hear the sob stories about raids on German cities I don't shed any tears. not even crocodile ones!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.