大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Paul Curd, of 大象传媒 South East, on behalf of his father Ernest Curd, and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Curd fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was born during the early years of the war, so all my memories of the war are related to being a child in London. We lived in Sandilands Road in Fulham at the time, and I went to school in Langford Road. My father worked for Firestone Tyres and was a member of the Home Guard.

As a child, the war was just part of everyday life. I hadn鈥檛 known things to be any different. After school, my mates and I used to play in all the bombsites without a second thought as to any danger we might be in. After all, danger was always present in those days. And the war affected the games we played, too. We would wage war on the kids from the next street, building our own trenches in the ruins of bombed-out houses, flying our homemade flags and throwing stones at each other. One day, during one of these war games, my mate Bobby Dove managed to get up to the first floor of a bombed-out house. Suddenly, without any warning, the floorboards gave way and Bobby came crashing down to the ground. We all rushed over, but he was completely unharmed. So we just carried on with the game.

I don鈥檛 think any of us appreciated how dangerous our games were, any more than we gave much thought to the war. We didn鈥檛 really realise what was going on. My friend falling through the floorboards was an added bit of excitement, but at the time it didn鈥檛 seem out of the ordinary. It certainly didn鈥檛 stop us playing on the bombsites!

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