大象传媒

First memories; the blitz raining on Lewisham, moving to Waltham Cross, Herts, the day before our house in South London received a direct hit. Crouching under the stairs with my grandmother during a raid, frightened by the noise, she was cursing the Germans and my mother drawn, like a moth to a flame, to the windows!

My family consisted of my mother and grandparents living over the shop at Waltham Cross. Due to the location of light aircraft factories a couple of miles away, we experienced many night time raids, the shop front was blasted out nine times in all.

Later, towards the end of the war, V1 and V2 rockets found their way to our locality. One day my mother, grandfather and myself were all swept off the floor by a near explosion.

During the war my father, who had been called up shortly after September 3rd 1939, served in North Africa and Italy after escaping from the Belgian Coast in 1940. He was wounded and spent D Day recovering in a military hospital.

He always remembered the plight of refugees fleeing from France in 1940 prior to the German invasion. He drove a lorry and took as many people on board as the vehicle could hold. People were offering their watches, jewellery etc. in the panic to escape.

I remember him telling us of the plight of Italian children, scaverging in the rubbish bins for food. That upset him, I think, more than anything.

I can recall the word 'victory' appearing more and more in newspapers towards the end of the war; in a way, it was a tangible feeling.

My father was demobbed from hospital in 1945, he was quite laconic about his experiences, often telling us that the first world war was the worst. It all seems like another world now.

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