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I remember when our house took a direct hit. It was September 1940 and I was fifteen years old. I did not want to be evacuated as I wanted to stay home with my mother. They said it was an aerial torpedo, probably meant for the waterworks nearby in Brookmill Road. Two days before, the docks were bombed.

During recent air-raids, my father would not come to the shelter but chose to sit in the front-room with my oldest brother who was recovering from a hernia operation, as he found it too uncomfortable to crouch down to enter our Anderson Shelter. When the air-raid siren went that night, Monday, my mother persuaded my father and brother to accompany us into the shelter. Early Tuesday morning, about 2.15am we heard a ‘thud’ and my father said, ‘That’s the house gone!’ Later, the air-raid warden came and told us to leave. We came up and all we could see was a big hole full of water where our house once stood, with just cushions floating. Almost three houses had gone. I remember seeing a neighbour who had been in bed at the time, walking around his bedroom dazed--nearly all the walls had gone and I could look straight into his house. All we had was what we stood up in. We lost everything. I’d lost my prized autograph book, signatures and photos I’d collected personally from stars who had appeared at The New Cross Empire.

We were taken along to Creek Road School, as we had nowhere else to go. The following day we were re-housed locally and neighbours gave us bits of furniture.

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