大象传媒

I was born in March 1933 in East Ham, East London. We lived in Cleves Road named after one of Henry VIII鈥檚 wives as were all the roads around us, e.g. Aragon, Boleyn, Seymour, Parr and Howard. Cleves Road was just three roads away from West Ham Football ground so we saw all the comings and goings of the crowds and everyone was an ardent West Ham supporter. It was a very close knit community where there was always help in times of trouble. I was surrounded by aunts, uncles and cousins and neighbours who I called 鈥淎unt and Uncle鈥�. It was a very happy, safe environment with street parties on every celebratory occasion, e.g. King George V鈥檚 Silver Jubilee and the coronation of George VI.

In September 1939, when war was declared I remember everyone being sad and fearful. Most of the men had been in the First World War, including my Father, and their memories were still fresh in their minds. However, life seemed to go on normally, especially to a child, and the worst thing that happened was that a barrage balloon broke loose from West Ham football ground where they were based and landed on the roof of our house. I was petrified as I was sure it would come down further and suffocate us all.

By the summer of 1940 the Battle of Britain had begun. My father had built our Anderson air raid shelter in the wooden shed my Grandfather had built. This, later, was to save our lives. While the German planes and our Spitfires were fighting overhead there was a lot of shrapnel raining down. This was very dangerous and my father devised a plan to take us from the house to the shelter in safety. We had a long tin bath that we used on Fridays to have our weekly bath. It hung on the wall outside the back door and my father would take it down and we would all walk to the shelter with the bath over our heads, my father, mother and baby brother 6 months old, m y sister 3 陆, me 7 陆, and my brother, 11.

On Sunday September 8th I had changed from my best clothes I had worn to Sunday School ready to go into the shelter where we spent every night. The day before the docks had been bombed and I remember the flames in the sky and the explosions. It seemed, to a child, as if the whole world was on fire, a sight I shall never forget. During the night an aerial torpedo fell in our front garden blowing our house and the whole row of houses to smithereens. The crater came right up to our shelter and the firemen said the shed had saved us as it took some of the blast. We were completely buried and had to be dug out. I was concussed and the first thing I knew was being carried out by a fireman to safety. I remember the crunch of his boots on the glass and rubble. Eventually we were taken to the school I attended. We were gathered together in the hall and given drinks. We had absolutely nothing, just the clothes we were wearing. There was no room in the shelter to store things so we had no food either.

We spent the rest of the night in the school and next morning we went back to our road to see if we could salvage anything. We saw our dead neighbours being dug out and put into blankets. Later that day a double decker bus came to take us to Loughton in Essex. We arrived at a church in Loughton and were shown to the church hall. I remember there were rows and rows of camp beds for us to sleep in. However, we hardly used them as the siren would go every night and we would have to go to the shelter. This shelter was an underground tunnel with wooden benches down one side where the children slept. The adults would just lean against the wall. We existed on the food, clothes and blankets the local people gave us. The men organised a big cooking pot over a fire and everyone would share. We walked into Loughton High Street one day and were machine gunned by German pilots. The men used to stand at the door of the shelter and talk and one night a bomb dropped and killed three of them.. This was just too much for my mother. We had been there for three weeks and with the strain of having nothing and a very young baby to look after she decided to write to her cousin in Bottisham, Cambridgeshire to ask if we could all go and stay. Fortunately she said we could and off we went to Bottisham. My baby brother died two months later as the result of being buried when we were bombed. My mother then needed to be with my father who had gone back to work at St. Pancras Station so we went back to London to face the land mines and the doodle bugs. But that is another story!

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