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In April 1941 I was suddenly struck down wit acute appendicitis. No teaching Hospital in London could take me because of the number of air-raid casualties. In the end I was taken by private ambulance, a converted hearse, to the London Clinic. My Father kept saying ''This is costing me 20 guineas a week''(It now costs about £20.00 a minute !). I was duly operated on. Each night we were moved, in our beds, down to the shelter in the basement. The shelter was next to Baker Street underground line and it was difficult to differentiate between trains and bombs ! After three weeks I was discharged, it was May 10th. 1941, the night of the largest raid on the West-end. The shelter in our block of flats was behind Lansdown Row and there was a well outside behind the shops which meant that one wall of the shelter was, in effect, exposed.
During the raid a stick of incendiaries fell against the wall and we had to evacuate the shelter.We sat, as a family, in a corridor next to an Air Ministry shelter whose door was locked against us. Every time a bomb fell nearby dust and plaster fell roun and on us. At one stage my Father actually said that he thought it doubtful that we would see morning. However we did. On going back tothe flat every window was blown in every bed was filled with glass fragments, and some new lead soldiers my Mother had bought me that afternoon, from a toy shop in Regent Street, had all been broken.
Instead of a three week convalescence at home I was immediately dispatched back to prep school in Oxford. a few days later my Father was sent a requisition notice, the building being largel undamaged, and it became The Ministry of Economic Warfare. I have loathed Fireworks ever since that night !