大象传媒

This is the story of my mother Gwen Edwards who is now 85 yrs of age.

When the war started I was living in Norwich with my mother in Orchard Street, I got married in 1940 and moved to London as my husband was an aircraft fitter in Handley Page (he had run away from Wales as a boy of 16 as he had been sent down the mines and hated it) My first recollections of the war was of an Anderson shelter in the garden which the first time it rained filled up with water so consequently we never used it again. The first time the air raid warning went off we were coming home from the cinema and everyone threw themselves on the ground but it was a false alarm, My first daughter was born in 1941 and we were living in Queens Park, Kilburn near the railway, the next time it went off we were inside the cinema and the manager announced it and said did anyone wish to leave and we did because we had left the baby with my mother-in-law. We heard the next day that a Landmine had dropped on the cinema killing at least 200 people, so we had a lucky escape. After that the bombing began in earnest as they were aiming for the railway station (which was never destroyed)

Every night the sirens would go off and I used to go in the cupboard under the stairs in between cooking my husbands dinner. He was blown off his bike coming home from work several times. Once a bomb dropped in the garden and fractured a gas main and killed a policeman, decapitating him I can still picture this today it was so horrifying, my husband was asleep under the stairs and got gassed and taken to hospital but was allowed out after 2 days. Meanwhile the house had had all its doors and windows blown out and there was glass everywhere so we went to my mother in laws. At this point my husband thought I should go home to Norwich as it would be safer and what happened but Norwich was bombed for the first time, we were near a Wood yard and the wardens told us to evacuate as they thought the whole lot would go up, there was no water, no electricity, fires burning everywhere and as Norwich had no air raid protection and I had the baby to think about I got the first train back to London.

A few months later as we had constant bombing and my mother had moved to the country I decided to go home again for a couple of weeks and whilst there a man came walking down the garden path and I did not even recognise it was my husband. The story he told was that apparently he had been asleep in bed when a bomb dropped and the only thing he could remember was walking down Edgeware Road which was at least a couple of miles away with no shoes and his pygamas in shreds and filthy dirty when a police car pulled up and took him to St Marys Hospital, he had a temporary memory loss and they kept him in but fortunately his memory returned and The Red Cross clothed him and paid his expenses to return to Diss and later on we discovered that the wardrobe doors had saved him from the worst of the blast. But he never did remember how he got out. So once again a lucky escape. After he had recuperated we returned once again to London as my husbands work was obviously of national importance. We were desperately short of planes.

We then got another house and if my memory serves me right it was a few months later that a doodlebug went right through the top of our house and landed in the front room of the house opposite killing a mother and baby so that house was again unhabitable and the council housed us in Victoria Road. By this time I was expecting another baby and the hospital was sending mothers to be out of London I had the choice of Norfolk because of my family and was sent to Downham Market to a Vicarage that had been taken over for a temporary maternity hospital and this was where I had my second daughter. Meanwhile my brother in law was a tailgunner on the bombers and he had been shot down at Sea. So my mother in law received 2 telegrams on the same day, one saying son missing presumed dead and one saying daughter born both well.
So she was obviously overjoyed to receive another one a few days later to say he had been found. Apparently they saw his silk white scarf whilst searching, only 2 of the crew survived. They picked him up and he was sent to Kings Lynn Hospital where he learnt that I had given birth to a baby daughter so as he was nearby he came to see me and the baby and was given a hero's welcome from the nurses as it had all been in the papers. He always said after that , that my daughter was his lucky mascot.

I returned once again to London and saw out the rest of the war without incident I lived there until my husband died in 1957 and I returned to Norwich.

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