大象传媒

I was born in 1937 in Leyton East London. I remember at a very early age being taken to a local school one evening, where we spent the night with many other people. My mother then decided she would prefer we take our chances at home, and this was where I stayed throughout the war. I have a clear memory of the blitz; blackout, sleeping in the Morrison shelter downstairs, sheltering in our coal cellar when the raids were bad. I remember the 'doodlebugs' - listening to their drone above, the silence, and the whistle - not knowing where the explosion would be! My grandmother was bombed out by one of the last of the V2 rockets - she had to come and live with us, after salvaging what little she could from the wreckage. I saw people being pulled out of bombed houses, dead and wounded, on my way to school. In assembly at school the Headmistress would call out the names of the children who had died in the raids the night before. The girl next door to me, a little girl with glasses called Belinda, had sadly lost her life. The skeletons of bombed out houses became my playground after people had retrieved their belongings from the wreckage. I swapped shrapnel with my friends; playtimes at school were skipping to music, then, when it stopped, seeing who could get their mickey mouse gasmasks on first. We queued - all 4 of us in our class - for the spoonful of cod liver oil we were forced to take. Number 44 had 43 mouths on that spoon before their mouthful! Some of us had head lice, scabies, tidemarks on our necks from lack of water and being herded together in the shelters. We all fought for first place in that queue! However, I do not remember being unhappy or wanting much - being content with simple things. I still have many o my friends from those days.