91热爆

I was 11 years old when the war started. I had just been to the cinema to see 鈥淕one with the Wind鈥� and was walking home when a doodlebug approached, the engine stopped, and I looked up to see it coming down straight for me. Fortunately for me it hit a house behind me, and blew me to the ground. I lay there covered in brown dust, thanking my lucky stars I was alive!

When the warning sire sounded, we all went down to the small music room at school and played cards until the all-clear. Our lessons were constantly interrupted by air-raids.

At home we slept downstairs. We tried a table shelter, but found it too claustrophobic. Late afternoon, people would carry their bedding to the public shelter to secure their place in a bunk.

Food was very boring and scarce unless you lived in the country and could supplement your rations with the odd chicken or rabbit. We used to get blackcurrant puree to put on bread, also dried egg and honey in tins from Canada.

My brother and I were due to go to Canada to stay with my uncle and aunt, but after a ship carrying evacuee children to Canada was torpedoed, the scheme was stopped.

Then my mother, myself and my brother went on another scheme to Bedfordshire. When we arrived we went to the village hall where the residents picked up whoever they could take into their homes. My mother and brother stayed a week in their billet, didn鈥檛 like it and went back to Croydon. I was billeted with the local policeman and his family. I had a good time but my mother thought I was having too good a time and sent for me to come home.

My father was in the Special Police. After a hard day at the bank, he would be on duty at night helping wardens, firefighters and people in Underground station shelters in London.

After an air-raid I would go out with the other children and collect up shrapnel and bullet cases. If a plane was shot down we would see parachutes coming down. One day I saw a man attached to a parachute which was on fire. It must have burnt through the cords, and I saw the man drop off and disappear.

Sometimes the barrage balloons escaped from their mooring and would flat around with their cables dangling, and as they lost their gas, they sometimes landed on a roof.

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