大象传媒

Towards the end of the war when I was 11 years old my parents and I visited my uncle, aunt and cousin. After a somewhat meagre Sunday lunch my aunt and mother "tidied up" and my father decamped into the sitting room with the paper - but my uncle had better ideas - down at the bottom of the garden was a huge apple tree, and an Anderson Shelter...a wonderful secret place to us kids - full of creepy-crawlies!
My uncle took us girls down to the tree and climbed a ladder into the branches, the idea was that he threw down the apples and we caught them, with instructions NOT to drop them as they would bruise and be useless.
Suddenly there was an ominous sound above us - my uncle shinned down the ladder like greased lightening and grabbed my cousin around the waist and me by my arm - catching one of my long plaits tugging away at the roots - I had the wierd idea that he was scalping me and yelled accordingly!
My uncle threw us into the shelter and himself over us to shield us, there was the most awful crash - it felt like it was right above us, to say the earth moved was putting it mildly; then sound of falling debris - like a hailstorm to end all hailstorms - then utter silence. The silence was the worst - eerie and unnatural.
My uncle told us to stay put and climbed out of the shelter - we heard him say "Oh God..No".. and we poked our heads out to see broken tiles, glass, rubble and bits of uprooted plants and branches. My uncle picked his way to the house - there was no glass in any of the windows in spite of the criss-cross sticky paper that had been on them - he called out to the house - I realise now that it must have been in utter dread at what he would find - but my father appeared at what had been the french windows saying that they were all OK.
My aunt and mother were coming into the sitting toom with tea when my father heard the V2 above, he pulled them both behind the sofa and tipped it against the wall so shielding them from the glass and parts of the ceiling!
The two houses across the road had a direct hit and my cousin lost three of her close friends.
The apple tree had lost all the apples - bruised I'm afraid - and never really cropped well again.

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