- Contributed by听
- 大象传媒 LONDON CSV ACTION DESK
- People in story:听
- Mrs O Britton;Mr and Mrs Cattermole; David Cattermole; Janet Cattermole; and Eleanor Cattermole
- Location of story:听
- London
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A7187286
- Contributed on:听
- 22 November 2005
At the age of ten I remember being brought back from a farm at Haywards Heath where my brother and I had been evacuated. My mum had just had my baby sister, Janet, and we came home to see her. I remember sifting in the armchair cuddling her
when suddenly the siren went off and my mother grabbed us all and made us all go to the air raid shelter in our garden.
i can remember there were lots of flashes across the sky. We tried to go to sleep but there was too much noise - guns firing, and the noise of planes. We looked through the door of the shelter and saw a couple of flying bombs going over with flames coming from behind. The flames stopped and then there was an eerie silence and then a terrible noise. All the windows were blown out of our house.
The next morning we found out that the bomb had fallen about 4 am in Farmers Road, Camberwell, London, which was the next road to us. My brother and I went to see what had happened and we found lots of people standing at their front gates crying. There was debris al1 over the road and we tried to get into Farmers Road but there were lots of A.R.P men stopping people. The big pub on the corner had been completely demolished !
My mother was very upset and as she had four children at home she sent us straight back to Haywards Heath the next day as she was so frightened for our safety.
My father was a policeman all through the war and I have a case with all bits of shrapnel that he picked up from different places, including the one that fell in Farmers Road that night of 25h June, 1944 and a defused incendiary bomb!
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