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The Blitz: 28 days of savage destruction. From the 7th of September 1940 to the 5th of October 1940 ton upon ton of bombs were dropped on London.

We could hardly come out of our shelters. We had no food, no sleep, and no clean clothes. Bombs were dropping on London day and night. In that month 7000 people were killed and 9000 injured and countless thousands homeless.

When the people eventually came out of their shelters they saw their homes had gone, everything they knew and recognised had gone, they had nowhere to go. They just walked aimlessly about looking for relatives, friends and pets, till the ARP Wardens took them to Red-Cross centres where the Red —Cross and the WVS looked after them and made them a nice cup of tea and sent them to a rehabilitation centres. Tea in those days was the nectar of the gods. People would use any excuse to have a cup of tea. I still do.

On another night, 100,000 high explosive bombs and incendiary bombs were dropped on the London Docks and the City from 500 planes flying low and following the Thames water line. In another all night raid on the docklands, thousands were killed. These sort of raids went on all the time.

London was an inferno, most of the water mains had been ruptured and at one time the EWS had run out and water had to be taken straight from the Thames. Which meant at times there was no water if the tide was low.

Smaller raids went on all the time and at times you didn’t know if it was bombs or gas mains blowing up. It was the utter chaos of it all. One of the worse, was, always being dirty, never being able to wash, always having grit in my hair from the falling debris and how everything smelt of smoke. Most of the time we were without water and gas. Hot water was a luxury. We couldn’t even put the kettle for a cup of tea let alone have a wash at times as there was no water or gas.

I was always very concerned for my family and if the bombs had been dropped in their area, after the raid I would cycle down to them to see if they were okay. I hated the thought of them getting hurt. I couldn’t stand it. As I cycled to where my aunties and cousins lived I saw bombed out injured people walking the streets in a daze, bleeding , crying, and clutching their grimy, injured little children. Or crying children looking for their injured parents. People and animals were lying dead in the streets. It was terrible especially if you knew them. You would look at them and not believe what you were seeing!

This story was submitted to the Peoples war site by Rod Aldwinckle of the CSV Action Desk on behalf of Rose McNamara - Wright, and has been added to the site with her permission.. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions’

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