大象传媒

Hampden Road in Harrow Weald holds special memories for me. It all started there - the laughter, the sadness of my wartime childhood. Peering down the road from the junction of Long Elmes I see the house I knew so well, but ut seems so small. My parents, two brothers and I lived there.
In the early part of the war, when the air raids started, the shelters were still being built. We were thankful that a communal shelter in Harrow Weald recreation ground was completed.
With your neighbours, we used to tramp down to the shelter, a good half mile away, with a large cart loaded with bedding and one would spend the night there. Despite the awful circumstances we then all shared, spirits were high: sing-songs in the shelter every night, everybody did their bit. Their was always a comedian to keep out chins up. We youngsters enjoyed every minute. It was an adventure.
I shelter was built in the street which saved us the regular trek to the recreation ground. I missed all the friends we had made at the recreation ground but we soon made more. We then progressed to the luxury of an Anderson shelter built in our back garden.
Ironically, when bombs fell nearby, we were all in the house. I remember a huge thus which seemed to last forever. For the first time in my life I was really frightened for my life, but dad kept reassuring us it would soon be all over. A direct hit had destroyed two housed in what we called the bend in Hampden Road. Our windows were blown in with the blast of the bomb but we came out without a scratch.
During that night my mother, expecting another child, went into premature labour. While my elder brother rushed to the telephone kiosk to call the midwife, my father frantically cleared fragments of glass in the bedroom. God was watching over us that night; the bombing stopped, the all-clear sounded and I was presented with a new brother.
Hampden Road suffered no further hits during the war. A landmine parachuted into the grounds of the nearby Kodak works one night. My father was on night-watch there. Fortunately id didn't explode.
We collected bits of shrapnel and compared our finds before storing them in biscuit tins. Without a sense of humour life would have been unbearable. There was always someone to help a less fortunate neighbour; unsung heroes were two-a-penny.
Later in the war Hitler turned his secret weapons on us. In broadcasts from Germany Lord Haw Haw warned us of the destruction the weapon could bring.
One if these, the V1 pilotless flying bomb - nicknamed the Doodlebug - came down in a steep hill on Harrow Weald Common. My pals and I were playing nearby and fearlessly ran to the spot. Its nose was buried deep into the ground but it had not exploded. We ventured nearer, but were send packing by the Civil Defense who erected a barbed wire barrier around it.
A prisoner- of- war camp for Italian prisoners was sited in the field at the rear of our house at the Headstone Lane end. Having heard about the German camps. I could not understand why the prisoners had so much freedom. I guess we were brought up to believe our enemies were like creatures from another planet. I soon discovered they were like us.
Some of them treated us kindly, and my pal and I spent an hour sharing tea with a prisoner through the barbed wire. Afterwards they were all allowed to venture out. Some of our neighbours sympathized with them and invited them to tea. Most of them seemed confused. They could not understand why they were at war with Britain and blames Mussolini.
Although the war was horrible I will always remember and cherish the great spirit shown by the people of Hampden Road. Peace was grand but a certain spirit of companionship and selflessness had gone forever.

Peter Carroll.