大象传媒

It was a daytime raid. My Mum was concerned that a friend in Hawthorn St would not hear the siren because she had been on night shift. So she put my brother Harold and myself behind a big chair and went up the garden and over the fence to wake the friend. It was a direct hit on the friends house. My brother can remember seeing our window blown in. I got an injury on my head from the blast.

They got my Mum's friend out and she survived. She was in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. My Mum was killed. We were taken to live with our Mum's sister at Alvaston. She had already got two boys of her own. In the end we were taken to our grandparents at Manchester and didn't return to Derby until three years later when our Father remarried. He was the eldest son, his mother was widowed and she relied on him to support her and his brothers, so he was exempt from serving in the Army. He was from Manchester but had come to Derby to work at Rolls-Royce.

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