Bombed Out

war broke out I was two years old, so did not remember too much at the begining.My Father was a tram driver for London Transport and his frustration in nott being allowed to enlist was very obvious as he tended to take it out on the family, what made it worst was all out nieghbours husband were in one of the services. After the Iron railings were taken away as part of the war effort, my father put up a wooden fence with a seat so that whoever was on fire watch at our end of Badric Road had somewhere to rest. I remember spending most nights sitting out there with whoever was on watch with my toy helmet and gas mask doing my bit before mother came and took us in to the shelter at the back of the garden. The shelter had an escape hole in to next doors shelter, we never had the door closed as the King family took it in turns with my mother to make sandwiches and cocoabecause we never got much sleep once the siren had gone. This was especially so once the rockets and Doodlebugs started because one of the older women in the Kings shelter listened fot the engine of the doodlebugs to cut out then she would say if it were ours or not. The one that I never heard her finish was ours and we were bombed out not that I remember much of it as I was knocked by the blast as I was nearest the door. My father was in doors asleep as he had towork the following day, he was woke up by the man who lived up stairs to get to the shelter but was too late. Also my youngest sister was asleep in her cot under the bedroom window the blast so iwas later told ,lifted the base of the cot causing the sides to fall away the base and the matteress with Eileen on fell to the floor, the sides fell on top of her so that when the window fell in they stop any major injuroes occurring, on the other hand my father was trying to retrieve my siter end up trapped under the wardrobe balanced prcariously on the bottom of his bed.Bothe the Kings family, the Pascall family and mine suffered no major injuries, we were billited in Mantua Street school until relations on my fathers side who lived in Norfolk took my mother, two sisters and myself in to their house. The worst part of this was that my elder sister Mary and I were all ways in trouble because of the fights that ensued because of the taunts of the other children, not all I might add, Things like they are too cowardly to stand a few German bombs. My father had to live in the bombed out house to carry on working. Eventually we moved back to Battersea to live my Aunt Gert who husband was killed abroad, and her family.We did move into a large flat near to this aunt in which we saw outthe rest of the war.

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