大象传媒

I was born in 1936 and lived with my parents and younger sister in Norbury, SW London. Norbury is close to Croydon from where the Air Force flew during the War. One night in either 1940 or 41 a stray bomb from Germany making for Croydon dropped immediately outside our house. All the neighbours - across the road and to the side of us were killed and my mother, sister and myself were the only ones to survive. My father was in the Home Guard in London and when he tried to get home, the Police would not let him near the area as he was told we were all dead. He climbed over some fences and found us in the brick built shelter attached to the house,unable to get out because of all the debris. I can clearly remember being sat on the dining room table, looking up and seeing the sky as the upstairs of our house had been blown off. A large piece of curbing was found on the pillow of the upstairs room I should have been sleeping in - which obviously would have killed me if I had been sleeping there. My mother puts our survival down to the fact that our dog would hear noises long before the air raid warning went and would bark. This she used as a sign to get us in the shelter. After this episode we went to stay with relatives in High Wycombe and had only been there a week, when another stray bomb fell in the field at the back of us. Whe then went back to Norbury (in another house as ours was not fit to live in) and saw the rest of the War out there.

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