大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of Dennis Dorban, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

At the beginning of the war at the tender age of five, I was already staying at a children鈥檚 home probably due to family problems. The home which, when I first arrived, I was told, This is your home now and remember, its two, four, five, Dunstable Rd Luton and don鈥檛 you forget it!
The home was really a large house where upstairs at the front house their were two main bedrooms which each held eight single beds. Outside on the left, facing Beech Hill School was a green painted fire escape with access from one of the bedrooms.

At the front of the house, the gardens were laid to lawn edged with borders filled with flowers. In the centre, was a footpath leading to a porch and front door. The door was half glazed and had windows above and each side of the door, were all decorated with colourful leaded lights.

At the back of the house the garden had a large lawn and a play area with swings, and was surrounded by a high wooden fence separating the home from the school on one side, and a footpath on the other. On the right hand side going up the hill was an allotment filled with vegetables.

By the time I arrived, I had become the seventh boy in the home, all the boys were of various ages. It wasn鈥檛 long however, before the numbers had increased to fifteen and more on the way.

During all this time workmen were working in the school playground, and later they took down part of the fence to fit a solid wooden gate, being inquisitive, by standing on the middle cross support of the gate we were able to see what was on the other side.

At the foot of the gate were four thick concrete steps leading onto the school playground, in the distance were two large holes, as we couldn鈥檛 see any more we let our minds do the work, and came up with all sorts of explanations.

One night the air raid warning went, normally we would be ushered down stairs into the dining room by the stairs. Tonight, however we were quickly made ready in our bedrooms, then led to the bedroom with the fire escape, where we scrambled down it for the first time.

Arriving at the driveway next to the play area we marched in pairs to the new gate. The gate was open, and, as the night was dark, care was needed to negotiate the steps and onwards towards one of the holes we had seen from the top of the gate.

As we reached the edge of the hole, we could see that there were concrete sides and a sloping path leading to the bottom, where someone was holding up a roll of thick heavy material and another holding back a black rubber door. Casually a voice said be careful of the horsehair.

Panic set in, when one boy said there鈥檚 dead horses down here, another one said, I cant see their heads, with that, the one holding the material let go, where it fell on top of him, knocking him to the ground but he couldn鈥檛 stop laughing. We had started to move in all directions, but the laughing, bought us all together again, and we went back down the slope holding hands and into the shelter.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.