大象传媒

Interview with Eric Murket by Henriette Wood Grossenbacher.
Eric is a longstanding friend of my husband, a mate from work at the London Electricity board. He spent the wartime as a primary school boy in London. He kindly gave permission to add his stories to the Peoples鈥� War website. The interview took place in late September 2005 at his house in Hunstanton, Norfolk.
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It was the end of the war, when doodlebugs came, that would be roughly 1944. Hitler produced them at the last minute to frighten us. Doodlebugs were rockets, bombs with a jet engine with explosives at the end. No pilot, just put in a coordination to travel over London. It was random. They were not shot from an aeroplane but from a place on the coast of France. When they run out of fuel they glided down. They were aimed for London but did not necessarily reach London. The RAF used to go and shoot them down and they would explode in the sky. Those, which came through just, came down where it was.
We were children and playing in a bombed school, all that was left, just the buildings and the playground this was in Kilburn Lane near the bottom of Kensal Rise. I remember it was the first time we saw a doodlebug, it came over us, and as children we thought for safety we dive underneath a shed The shed was just corrugated with holes in it, no protection at all but as children we thought we were doing the safe thing by diving underneath. We laid there and when the explosion came my pal Gordon (Smith) said:鈥� oh dear it鈥檚 gone near my sister鈥檚 house.鈥� which was at the end of Kilburn Lane which is called Wakeman Road. So we run up there, passed her house, which was obviously o.k. But at the end of the road is the Kensal Green Station. We arrived at the station and all we saw was disaster, smoke going away and we witnessed our first body we had ever seen and a man came across and hushed us away, told us to be away or words to that extent. And off we went. I think the bomb hit the station, one of the lines and must have put it out of order. I have no idea where the body came from; the person could have just been hit in the street. We went home, we were not upset. On the contrary the war was exiting for children, just plain exiting.

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