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In the early hours of 8 August 1944, a doodle bug landed on my grandfather’s house in Pemberton Road, East Molesey, near Hampton Court, killing my grandmother, Dorothy Clark, aged 36 and two neighbours, Mrs Pratt and her friend.
My father, Norman Clark aged 16 and my grandfather Frederick Clark were pulled out alive 14 hours later by Mr Vic Stevens and others. They were taken to Molesey hospital to be checked over and were found to have no serious injuries. They were then discharged from the hospital in their pyjamas and expected to walk home! (which they did, although of course they had no home to go to.) They were taken in by relatives for the rest of the war. The family cat was retrieved 7 days later, still alive.

More than 20 years later my mother was working for the Milk Marketing Board and met a lady who she discovered had built a bungalow on the site of the two houses. When my father later visited the site, he pointed out an indentation where the bomb had landed. The owner confessed that despite their best efforts they had been unable to get the ground level.

For my parents’ golden wedding anniversary they went for a cruise on the Rhine, where they met by pure chance the daughter of the heroic Mr Stevens, then 91 years of age.
When they rang him from the boat, and related the story and the connection he immediately responded: “Oh you mean Norman and his dad, when asked if he remembered the people involved!

In conversation with another passenger on the boat, my mother discovered that he had been a prisoner of war in Germany and had met one of his former guards, again by chance, on the quayside before embarkation.

PS: My father, Norman was working at the Air Ministry towards the end of the war, when a bomb landed in the Strand, killing most of the people from the building. Norman and a colleague dived behind a water tank and survived, although suspected multiple injuries, when the strawberries they had just bought erupted over them!

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Mrs Jeanette Clark with help from her daughter Norma and Derek Hewett on behalf of of London CSV. The story has been added to the site with the author's permission and she undersatands the site's terms and conditions.

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