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It was the beginning of October 1940 and London was suffering terrible bombing. As we all know, it was The Blitz. I was three years old and my Mother had gone into labour. She was admitted to Lambeth Hospital to await my brothers birth. Unfortunately, the hospital was bombed and my Mother and myself was ambulanced off to Guildford, with the rest of the maternity wing, and that is where my brother was born.

I was part of a very large family, lots of Aunties, Cousins and both sets of Grandparents. No Uncles, they were all away in the Forces.

We had quite a few tragedies in the family. One Auntie was in a shelter with her six week old baby girl and a toddler of two, when her shelter had a direct hit, she was buried for hours but survived, her little boy didn't.

One Uncle went down with six hundred comrades, when their ship was torpedoed off the coast of Africa. Another was unlucky to drive over a land mine and another badly injured by shrapnel.

As one or more of my Aunties became pregnant and perhaps not always feeling well, any enquiries from me of what was wrong, was always answered with "She's got a bad leg and mind your own business miss!".
Why did the Aunt's have bad legs and why was the swelling well above their knees? Well our Mum developed one of these bad knees in 1944, during another air raid and the result was a new baby brother. Blonde and blue eyed, we called him Danny. We thought we were very lucky, we were still safe and we had a Dad somewhere in the Army.
Then one night, during a raid, we were accidently pushed down a flight of stairs in an underground shelter and our Mother crushed our new baby brother. They were rushed off to hospital and we never saw Danny again, he died on 6th June 1944, D.Day. Our poor Mum was distraught, so Dad decided it was best if we were evacuated, as he was now going over to join his regiment, he had been given special leave for the funeral. Had fate saved our Dad? Would he had survived the invasion of France?

We spent the duration of the war, on a little farm in Wales and have kept in touch ever since, in fact 62 years. I have just come back after a visit with my Grandaughter, she is the fourth generation to visit the farm and hopefully there will be a fifth.

Our home in now Chard in Somerset, where we have many friends and a busy lifestyle. We are very happy, if only it could last forever.

P.S. Twenty odd years later, I had two bad legs of my own! - mystery solved. x

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