大象传媒

I started at Grammar school in Beckenham, Kent in Sept 1940 right in the middle of the battle of Britian. I was 10 years old.

After 1 term, half the school was evacuated to Exeter (January 1941) and we stayed until April 1942 when Exeter was badly bombed and my parents decided I would bejust as safe back in Beckenham.

My Grandparents lived across the road from us and they had an Anderson shelter in their back garden - however, due to my grandmothers infirmity, they could not use it and so my father decided to use it so we could be near to my grandparents in an air raid. However, after a rain storm which left 18 inches of water in the bottom of it, we decided that we were not going to use it anymore. So instead we had a Morrison shelter in our large kitchen in our house. My mother and my younger brother slept under the shelter whilst I had a camp bed just alongside. I would go in with them whilst the air raids were happening.

Sadly my father had died in January 1943 - he was firewatching at his own office, drank some contaminated water and contracted typhoid fever and died within 10 days.

In March 1943, on this particular occasion, the all clear had sounded following a raid and I was back out on my camp bed when I heard a drone of an aircraft which I knew wasn't ours! I told my mother that I was coming back under and 20 seconds later the room lit up as an incendiary bomb came through the ceiling, bounced on the top of the Morrison shelter and landed on my campbed. My mother's first thought was to get us to safety and let the house go, so we got out into the front garden. Our neighbour who had been watching the fires from his window, opened the sash windows and dragged us 2 boys inside. My mother decided to go back in to the house to see what she could do. We had stirrup pumps and fire buckets, but in the meantime the bomb had exploded and set fire to the camp bed. My mother decided to drag the campbed outside, but it didn't help a lot as she dragged the fire along with her and the bomb by this time had burned through to the floor and was still merrily burning away!

As she got out into the garden she started shouting "Fire, Fire" and a passing air raid warden said "Yes Madam - look around you, there are fires everywhere!" And there were - lots of houses were burning by this time.

The following morning we returned to the house and we found 2 more incendiary bombs in the bath that had burned out - the 3rd had missed the bath, crashed through the bathroom floor and through to the Morrison shelter - we'd had a very lucky escape!

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