大象传媒

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This story was submitted to the Peoples War Site by Stacy Blyth from The Folkestone School for Girls and has been added to the website on behalf of Tony Baker with his permission and he fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

It was about 1944, we had been bombed out. We had now moved from Camberwell and lived in Balham. This in turn was heavily bombed as well. When a bomb had dropped, you wanted to go out and look at the bombsite. It would always be smoking and covered in a mountain of rubble. A bomb would typically destroy a row of 6 houses at a time. I would invariably go to the latest bombsite and inspect the damage. I would often go half an hour after the bomb had dropped and you would see a dozen people working on the bombsite shifting rubble and bricks looking for people trapped under the debris.
I said to myself, I have got to get to the site far more quickly and see what happens immediately after the bomb has dropped.
During the day I heard a bomb drop very close by causing a huge explosion. The whole house shook and I saw it as my opportunity, I was going to go straight to the bomb site. Immediately after it had dropped I ran up the cellar steps, ran through a couple of streets and ran about 400m. I suddenly heard lots of noises and I thought 鈥淲hat is going on?鈥�. Then there was lots and lots of rattling sounds, and it dawned on me that all the rattling was the sound of falling debris and rubble, pieces of metal raining onto the roofs from the bomb that had dropped. All the blast material was still in the air as I was running. I ran into a garden with a small hedge and threw myself down onto the ground. I waited about 10 seconds and a huge piece of metal about 2 feet long plunged down and missed me by about 3 inches and stuck into the ground. I then waited for the debris to stop falling, stood up, ran the 100 yards to the site and was still very annoyed because there was one man alone who had beaten me to the site.

鈥楧辞辞诲濒别产耻驳蝉鈥�
As a young boy I used to help the milkman do his rounds. This was the day of the V1鈥檚, the doodlebugs. We were perfectly used to it. There were certain flightpaths, and they were launched from fixed sites on the continents. As I was out every day, I became nonchalant about seeing the doodlebugs every day. You could see it on the horizon, and see which house it was coming over. From this you could decide in which direction it would hit, and where the damage would be and therefore, you could assess the risk of being it. But if you saw it from another point, it would come directly over you and you would remember to watch out for that one. The rule was, that if you heard the engine coming closer and closer you were safe because it would always drop and fall beyond you. But if you heard it cut out as it was approaching you, you would dive for the ground because that meant it was coming straight at you.

鈥楳y first V2鈥�
As a child, my favourite subject was science. And although the teacher didn鈥檛 like me, I carried on with it anyway. I still lived in Balham and there was a common very close to us, Tooting Beck Common. We were always playing there, and one day I was walking towards the common. I heard a sound and firstly came a massive explosion, then a sound which is hard to describe. You hear an explosion, then a roar like thunder, and then it gradually recedes. Because the rocket travelled faster than the speed of sound, it travelled, landed, blew up and then you heard the noise after. As a child I worked it out and it was announced on the radio a few days later.

All children used to collect shrapnel, fallout from a bomb or a shell. Some were far more common than others and it was like a small game were you swapped pieces, you tried to collect pieces of copper or brass which were more valuable than steel shrapnel.
One day we were collecting shrapnel and I looked up to a tree we were passing beneath and on the branch of the tree was hanging the arm of a small child.

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