91热爆

This story is dictated by Mrs. Eileen Evans (nee Le Surf), as told to her grandson Patrick Watson who has written this article for her.
All the information in this story is as accurate as it can be.

I was nearly 6 years old when the second world war broke out in September 1939. We lived in a house very close to the east India docks in Poplar in the east end of London. I remember the noises of the bombs being dropped, saw the beams of search lights scanning the night sky which revealed German planes and that鈥檚 when we saw the flashes of the guns. The next day we saw many places that were there before, which had gone and instead there was devastation everywhere, something which will stay with me forever.

The night I remember the most was when the whole of London seemed to be blazing with flames, my mother later told me that bombs had been dropped on the sugar boats in the east India docks.

My grandmother and grandfather moved from Stepney to Hoddesdon because they had relatives living there, my grandfather used to travel to London everyday. My grandfather could of been one of the first civilian casualties of the war, he worked for a brewery driving a horse and brewers dray. One day he was going around his daily business, when he stopped to get the nosebag behind the dray to feed the horse, when a bomb dropped and killed him, he died on 14th of September 1940, he was 54 when he was killed.

My grandmother had been bombed out in the blitz on the east end from Stepney, She came to Waltham Abbey where she managed to get a house next door to the King鈥檚 Arms public house at 81 Highbridge Street close to the river Lea.

Very soon after we went to Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire where we stayed with a lady in 23 Crossfield Road. We had not been there very long when a bomb fell on Woolworths in the main high street, this made me think that these awful bombs were following my family around. We were not happy living there.

We came to Waltham Abbey to visit my grandmother and other relatives, my mother told my grandmother how unhappy we were living in Hoddesdon and she suggested we came and stayed with friends of hers and they would try to get accommodation for my mum and myself and my 2 sisters. When we eventually did get a place to live it was at 44 Highbridge Street, next to Powder Mill Lane where the Waltham Abbey Gunpowder Mills was situated.

My father, Alfred Louis Le Surf, was in the merchant navy, he came home from sea but was very ill at the time, I can remember a big black mark on his arm, which I was told when I was older was a burn caused by a boiler which he fell against while being chased by enemy U-boats. On the day he came home he was very ill and within a couple of days, he was taken to hospital and died within a week, his post-mortem revealed that he died of septicaemia and a foreign germ which was thought to be in the drinking water that was picked up from a foreign port for the ship. My father was 40 years old when he died July 4th 1942, which I will never forget since it is also American independence day. He served in the merchant navy for 26 years, he was awarded 3 war medals, The Pacific Star, The Atlantic Star and The War Medal given to people who served in the war 1939-1945.

Things seem to have quietened down, when one night my mother was in bed reading when she saw a white dove appear on the windowsill, she immediately thought something had happened to her brother Charlie who was in the Royal Rifle Brigade which was also known as 鈥淭he Green Jackets鈥�, who was fighting in the army at Monte Casino in Italy, she later went to see my grandmother, when she was told that a telegram had been received saying that he was killed in action on 29th May 1944, he was 21 years old.

On 7th of March 1945, I was coming back from shopping for my mother in Highbridge Street, when I heard a noise in the sky so loud that I immediately looked up and saw what appeared to be a rocket, with long flames coming out of the back of it, the rocket鈥檚 engine stopped and it came descending to the ground, about 75 yards ahead of me, it blew me down to the ground, I was lucky to have survived. The devastation was caused by a German V2 rocket, which is believed to making for the Waltham Abbey Gunpowder Mills in Powdermill Lane, nearly all the buildings from Powdermill Lane to Refinery bridge in Highbridge Street was devastated, 5 people were killed and 53 were injured.

I went to Waltham Holy Cross School in Quaker Lane. My friend Audrey Clarke had been playing with a ball in class that day and the teacher Mrs. Gomm took the ball away and said she was never going to get it back, Audrey was killed when the rocket dropped, she was 12 years old, the same age as me, she died along with her younger brother Norman. Next door, the home of Mr and Mrs Richards and family who were friends with my grandmother and my family in Waltham Abbey. In the house, a young boy Jimmy Strudwick (the grandson of Mr and Mrs Richards) was also killed when the rocket dropped.

My sister Patricia (Pat) went to the house of the Richards because she used to collect their young granddaughter from the Cedars day nursery in Sewardstone Road, they used to give her the bus fare to take her to the nursery to pick up Jean Strudwick. On that particular day, we learnt later, she managed to get an earlier bus which ended up saving her life because she was on the bus when the V2 rocket dropped. At the time my mother thought she was among the rubble of the destroyed houses and I can see her to this day going frantic with worry.

We were bombed out of our home at 44 Highbridge street and we went to live over the top of the hairdressers in Foxes Parade, we then went to live in a house at 1 Greenfield Street, still in Waltham Abbey, where we lived until I got married on March 27th 1954 in the Waltham Abbey Church and came back to Waltham Abbey in 1962 where I have been living since then. My sister Maureen and her husband lives in Greenfield street to this day.

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