ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

I was a 16 year old living in Hackney. We thought we lived in a lucky road as no bomb seemed to fall on us. We had sunk the shelter given to us by the government in our garden, just like everybody else. We spent so long in our shelter that we moved our beds in there
‘Then one night there was a mighty explosion. There was no warning. There were no other bombs falling nearby. The bang was terrific. We had become quite good at judging the distance of bombs and would make our way to the shelter of a friend if we were not near our home.
‘We found out later it was what they called a parachute mine so it did not make the whistling noise like normal bombs. There was just no warning. It had landed 50-100 yards away and destroyed or badly damaged most of the houses in our road that had survived so well till then. We went to check on the neighbours.
‘Sadly one of them had the entrance of their shelter facing the blast and they were all killed.
This story was submitted to the people’s War site by a volunteer from CSV Oxford on behalf of Ken Jones. It is the edited transcript of a taped interview and he gave written permission for the material to be edited and published.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.