大象传媒

I was evacuated from Portsmouth at the outbreak of WW2. Initially my school, Northern Parade Infants, was sent to Cadnam in the New Forest, but we did not stay long. About 1940, after the 'raids' started my mother, father and I, moved to Chidden. Whilst there I was on a shopping trip by car, the only means of transport,to Waterlooville and just out of the village of Hambledon we met the local Doctor heading towards us, he had his sun-roof open and was waving his arms out of the top and pointing across the fields! When we looked there was a land-mine hanging in the trees across the valley.
On another trip we nearly ran down an ARP Warden who was stopping traffic due to an Air-raid, we had been watching the 'Dog-fight' going on overhead. Often at night we could stand on the front lawn at the farm and watch the 'barrage balloons' being shot down over the Portsmouth area.
Following the January 10th. blitz on Portsmouth, when my cousin and his parents were killed, my father and I visited my Grandmother to find that an incendiary bomb had fallen through the roof, brought down a large amount of plaster from the ceiling, and burned itself out on the bed, only scorching the feather bed.

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