大象传媒

We had to take gas masks with us for most of the wartime. They came in a cardboard box, but after a while, most people had a more serviceable bag for them. There were often air raids in the daytime when we were in school, and then we had to go into the air raid shelters, which were made of large diameter concrete pipes, which were probably main sewer pipes with duckboards and wooden seats provided, and further barricades around the ends of the shelters. After the intensity of the Battle of Britain there was a quieter time, but then there were daylight raids,which led up to a spate of V1 flying bombs (Doodle-Bugs) which were sent over anytime of the day or night. Initially, there was a very large number of them that got through, causing havoc, but after a few days, most of them seem to have been shot down or blown up before reaching us. The RAF and other defences did a terrific job at this time especially. This was at about July 1944 as far as I can remember.
The next wave of weapons from Nazi Germany were the sneaky V2 rockets, which could not be detected in those days, and we would only know we were being attacked by the explosions. There were, fortunately, not a great number of them, but one fell close enough to me (who was playing in the back gsrden at the time) for me to be knocked off my feet by the blast. After an explosion, you could sometimes see a vapour trail showing part of their trajectory.
This phase did not seem to last long, because the RAF were very successful in bombing the V2 launch sites, with the famous earthquake bombs.
The end on the war seemed to be something difficult to accept to a lad of my age (11), who had had most of his formative years in wartime.

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