- Contributed by听
- threecountiesaction
- People in story:听
- Peggy Bahr, Mrs. Evans
- Location of story:听
- Leyton (East London)
- Article ID:听
- A5167451
- Contributed on:听
- 18 August 2005
This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Three Counties Action on behalf of Peggy Allan and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.
On the night of 20th September 1940, a 1,000lb German bomb fell on our house at 59 Dunedin Road, Leyton, E10 and with it wrecked or demolished around fifty other houses in the road. Two pensioners who were sheltering in their basement were killed in outright.
At 14 years of age I worked in the city, Golden Square nr. Old street and walked every morning from Liverpool Street Station to where I worked for a Menswear firm as a Clerk typist.
Some time in October 1940 after severe air raids the night before I a lighted from the train at Liverpool Street Station. The Central Line was just about finished construction but was not in use at the time. One morning as I travelled on the steam train we (the train itself) had to hide under Liverpool Street鈥檚 many archway/ tunnels to avoid being hit by German Fighters who were endeavouring to hit the train with gunfire.
My daily walk to work took 15 mins. And involved walking around St. Paul鈥檚 cathedral which had been hit by several incendiary bombs the night before and was still smouldering after being set on fire. I had to dodge and step over masses of snaking hose pipes lining the road. I finally reached my office building to find that also had been hit by bombs and only a skeleton remained.
My sister joined the ATS at 18 and was taught to drive. She drove a large khaki ambulance with a red cross on either side and a motor cycle. Each day her duty consisted among other things of riding on her motor cycle to Bletchley Park with messages to be decoded there and, of course, she was escorted by a 鈥淪ecurity motor cyclist鈥.
At the age of 18 years in 1943 I became a nurse.
As the war went on for six year we got used to it and finished up in the latter years not even going down to out Air raid Shelters 鈥 we just carried on with what we were doing.
At the age of 14 upwards I found life a challenge and was always keen to get to work.
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