91�ȱ�

My mother got bombed: She lived on a street and on the opposite side of the road there was a factory that made shells. I remember seeing them when I was little — I used to sit at the window and watch them going through.

They had a lot of soldiers around there, and we lived just down the road so we could see everything that was going on. They dropped a landmine just up the road from the factory, and it whizzed down the street and never touched the shell factory, but it touched our side of the road! It’s just as well ‘cause I wouldn’t have liked the factory to have gone up! It went right into my mother’s side of the road — it took quite a bit of Mum’s house; and my sister’s - just up from Mum’s — she lost all the side of her house — you could see all of her furniture! They went to work in their slippers that night — they had nothing else.

I was in the shop then, and I went down to see how they all were, and everything was just covered with soot — it was just black everywhere and I thought to myself ‘how creepy’, it was creepy and horrible.

I then went back to work, and my sister came and told me Mum was staying in Waterloo with my other sister (Diane), so I was very glad then. She couldn’t go back where she’d been before, there wasn’t much else to be offered so she got moved and I don’t know how she got it, but she ended up in what was like a big shop.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the 91�ȱ� Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Dorothy Cottis and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See more of Dot's stories:

• Doing a man’s job
• Red skies for miles
• I must have looked nuts!
• I had to collect my own flowers!
• ����Ǵdz�!”
• ”Ping Ping”
• You had to have a laugh

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