大象传媒

On September 7th 1940 I was only three years old so, obviously, this recollection is going to be somewhat sketchy.

I lived in a poor area adjacent to Oriental Road. The houses were built in the 19th century to house those building the Royal Docks. They were cheap and quickly put up so, by the 1940's, they were little more than slum dwellings. I lived with my mother in Kempton Street with someone I knew as Aunt Toots.

On this Saturday afternoon I was playing with my toys in the bedroom when there was a knock at the front door. I took it upon myself to race to it where I met the Insurance lady collecting money. As my mother reached the door with her purse, the sirens went. Almost immediately the first bombs began to fall so I was picked up by my mother and the three of us dashed through the house to the Anderson shelter in the back garden where I distinctly remember being thrown in in the rush to get under cover. We could hear the bombs exploding, sometimes very near. Eventually the all clear sounded and we started to leave the shelter only to be confronted by a wall of fire. My mother thought that it would be safer in the public shelter at the end of the road so we desperately ran there.
I have read since that an air raid shelter in Oriental Road received a direct hit killng all the occupants. We must have been very lucky to have got out. There was a sudden panic and we ran out of the shelter and through what I remember as someone's house and into a large garden of long grass whereupon I lost a shoe but was told to keep running. I then lost the other shoe and was picked up and carried by one of the men in our group. We broke through a fence at the bottom of the garden and found ourselves on the pavement.

The next thing I remember was arriving at either a church or church hall where we slept that night. The following morning we were somehow transported to a local school which I can bring to mind quite easily. The place was packed and I remember two things. First the over-full toilet pan and secondly leaving the school on the back of a lorry.

I seem to have had no fear at this time. It was just a big adventure. Now, approaching my seventies, it has taken on an almost nostalgic quality. Bizarre?

I never did learn what happened to Aunt Toots!

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