大象传媒

As aboy of 8-10 years living in the Chapel End district of Walthamstow (now Waltham Forest)in East London I have many wartime memories. Some serious some blackly humorous and some stirring.
One time, whilst on the way to school, casually looking for shrapnel as we went,a friend and I spotted the fin of an incendiary bomb sticking out of the soft soil of an allotment (vegetable patch). Squeezing throught the railings it was plucked from the ground and taken to school. Lunchtime, my friend and I sat on his front doorstep and tried to remove the end cap by various means, all of which included banging it in some way. You see we were convinced , as it had not exploded on landing, that it was a dud. Intent on what we were doing we did not notice my friends' dad getting off his bike at the gate. We DID notice his language when he snatched it from us, put it into a bucket of water and rushed round to the A.R.P.Post with it.

During the blitz a stick of H.E. bombs straddled our local streets, one hitting my grandfathers' house, just eight houses from ours, reducing it to rubble. Two people in the house were killed and they were never found but granddad survived with just a few scratches. Another bomb, having penetrated the wall of a bakers shops did not explode and was found 'hiding', when they open the door, inside the bakers' oven.

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