大象传媒

The year was 1944. I was nearly three years old. I lived with my parents and my baby sister in Brockley, South London. Our house backed on to a railway line. My mother was very worried about our vulnerability because the Germans often targetted railway lines for their bombs. Eventually my parents decided to move. They sold the house and put their money down on a modern house in Eastern Road, Brockley. They moved in all their furniture and belongings but there was a delay in our moving in because of some red tape. It was July and the weather was very hot. My father was a policeman in the Met. and he had a few days leave. They decided to have a few days by the sea in a bungalow near Brighton. While we were there my sister developed whooping cough. She was only three months old and she was extremely ill. The plan had been that we would return to London on Sunday and move into our new home, as my father was due back at work on Monday. However, my sister was so poorly that my father had to travel back to London on his own on the Sunday. Rather than move into the house he decided to stay at his parent's home in Deptford. During the Sunday night our new house was blown to bits by a German flying bomb. By a stroke of luck we were all saved from certain death.

Hence I have called myself "lucky ann", although we were all lucky really. My sister made a full recovery from the whooping cough.

Obviously we never lived at Eastern Road. My father found us another house to rent. My parents eventually received some compensation from the War Damage Commission in December 1947. They were never able to buy another house in London. They never complained about what had happened to them and about the personal possessions that they lost. They were just so grateful that we had all been spared. They knew others who had not been so lucky.

Eventually we all moved to the Brighton area and made a new life there. My parents both lived into their seventies.

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