大象传媒

On the night of the 18th September 1940 at approximately 2 am a land mine dropped at the top of the road in which we lived, 22 Badlis Road, Walthamstow, London E 17 and when it landed a lot of Badlis Road
at the top end by Forest Road was demolished. The terraced houses were numbered as usual, even numbers one side of the road and odd numbers the other. So although the house was number 22 we were much
nearer the top than appears to be the case. The back of the house was almost completely destroyed and most of the roof was lost. A lot of our possessions were lost too. My mother and I were in the garden
Anderson shelter as normal and asleep on our bunk beds. My sister had been evacuated to South Wales, a town called Blaenavon Nr. Abergavenny. My father was in the Auxiliary Fire Service, having started
training for it before war started.
The 18th of September was my fathers birthday and he was on duty as he was every night at the fire station on the slight hill in Forest Road, they had a 鈥渟hout鈥� to a fire at Wood Street school and they needed to
go along Forest Road to get to it. They were about to set off and could see the parachute of the land mine because of the many searchlights that illuminated the sky, they knew near enough where is was when it
exploded. My father was the driver of one of the fire engines and he had to make a detour to get around all the debris blocking Forest Road. He did not know until he came off duty what had happened to mum and
I. He was very thankful to find us bothn alive and uninjured.

After the terrific dust had settled the boy next door, Ron Coleman and I went out to rescue our neighbours Mr. Kennett and his wife and daughter Ruth aged in her early twenties. Mr Kennett was an invalid and
had chosen to have a part of the house shored up with timber as getting into a shelter was extremely difficult for him. The lad next door and I cleared away some of the debris to get at them all out and we did get
them into the shelter with us. It never occurred to my friend and I that there was any danger with the air raid still going on. The gas main was severed but as we were the only people with any sort of power my
mother had a distinct dislike of gas she had opted for an electric cooker and electric kettle. In the middle of all this mum went into what was left of the house to make us all a cup of tea. The electricity was still on.
At this point an amusing thing happened, all lighting circuits were in steel conduit those days and a house in Winns Terrace opposite us at the back had a lighted bulb hanging in mid air in the back bedroom,
along comes an Air raid warden shouting at the top of his voice 鈥減ut that light out鈥� we laughed as there were fires still raging where the land mine had struck, no one could reach the switch for the light as the
house had lost all its top floor and of course the stairs. We all ended up standing on the rubble, throwing things at it until someone hit and broke the bulb. A loud cheer went up for the success, still in the middle
of an air raid - shrapnel falling as anti aircraft guns were blazing away.
A sad thing is that the shops up on Forest road had flats above them and were completely demolished but none of the occupants survived their bodies were not even found, presumably just vaporised.
My friend and I were just past our 14 Th. birthday.

From Ron Wilson email: ron@peaston.wanadoo.co.uk

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