大象传媒

In 1943 I was attending Torridon Road School in Catford, I was 9 nine years old. On my way home for lunch one day the air raid siren sounded and I wasn't too sure whether I should go back to school or run home. At the same time I heard a lot of noise that sounded like stones rolling off a tin roof and saw two German planes flying over at roof top height - they were so close I could see the men in them quite clearly. One of the men was leaning out of the cockpit of the plane and appeared to be smiling and waving at me. There were people at a bus stop nearby and a bus had just pulled up. The people took no notice of the planes and got on the bus which then moved off. I thought everything must be okay but some small children then came up to me crying and clinging to me. Just then a man and a woman came out of their house looking very worried. They called to us to come into their home where we stayed until the 'all clear' sounded. Whilst we were there a bomb dropped nearby but we didn't know where. I then went home.

My sister was at home as she had been unwell and didn't go to work that day. She was white faced and kept me with her until our mother came home from work which was shortly after I had got home. I found out later that my mother and all the other women in the factory where she worked had heard that a school had been bombed but nobody knew which one. It was Sandhurst Road School near where my school was. It had taken a direct hit right through the centre of the building resulting in considerable loss of life and injury.

I was too frightened to go back to school that afternoon and we all stayed together until my father got home. My sister told him her story which was that she was laying the fire and went to put the ashes in the dustbin. As she opened the back door she saw this German plane coming right at her, so she threw the ash pan at the plane, slammed the door shut and got down behind it. My father laughed and said that wouldn't have helped her if the crew had used their machine guns as the bullets would have gone through the door. I then told my Dad all about the German who had waved at me. He asked me "What did you do then?" and I said "I waved back of course." I was a very polite little girl! Dad roared with laughter and said "He wasn't waving at you stupid - he was machine-gunning you." That was the noise Like stones on a tin roof that I had heard. I didn't know, I had never heard a machine gun.

My only real contribution to the war effort happened when I was evacuated to Gunnislake, in Cornwall. My sister and I stayed with some other girls at a big house with lovely gardens. One day we saw a convoy of soldiers passing the front gate. We had apples with us so we threw them for the soldiers. I think they must have been very pleased to get some fruit and shouted their thanks. One soldier was sitting in the back of an open lorry reading a newspaper and the apple hit him on the nose, but he still thanked us for it. A staff car then pulled up and we thought we were in trouble, but they only wanted some apples as well.

I've often wondered if any of those men made it through the war.

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