大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Odilia Roberts from the Derby Action Team on behalf of Mary Elizabeth Reynolds and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My elder brother Frank was home from his job at Newton鈥檚 factory and had closed the back door after the air raid warning had gone, having already heard the whistle of a falling bomb he was just in time to get my mother and sister into the strongest part of the house, under the stairs. After the raid the two first houses into Offerton Avenue, which directly faced our house on Kenilworth Avenue, were a shambles. Both the first and the left hand side of the second semi-detached were a shattered mess of brick, rafters and tiles. Two or three bombs, one of which remained unexploded, had hit Derby Lane. All the roofs of Laurel Bank were gone and so it was said later, the houses had been moved back by the blast by as much as four inches from the road.

My father, George, called out from his night shift working on Merlin engines at Rolls Royce, was stopped at the Barracks on his way home by the police, due to the unexploded bomb at the intersection of Derby Lane with Kenilworth Avenue. However, after explaining exactly where he lived he was allowed through.
I can only imagine his relief to find our home nearly intact and the family alive and uninjured. Only later did they discover the fallen ceiling in my younger brother George鈥檚 bedroom and the hole in the roof through which the stars were visible next night. This brother had been fire watching at work, had he been at home the damage to his room might have resulted in his death. As I it was he later went on to join the Navy taking part in very secret training as one of the crew of a two man human torpedo. But that鈥檚 another story.

Sad to say amongst the casualties from Offerton Avenue that night were a young mother and her small baby, the sight of who鈥檚 tiny clothes still clinging to a nearby tree next morning must have been an awful reminder, if needed, of the evil and futility of the war.

And where was I? Well, not to be born for another seventeen months, in May 1942.

One of my childhood memories from the early Fifties is of playing on the site of the rebuilding of the two-bombed semi-detached houses, which are still the view from our living room window.

I can鈥檛 help thinking that if that bomb aimer had dropped his bombs just of a fraction of a second earlier I might never have been here and able to tell this story.

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