READER’S wartime story
In the second and final part of his London Blitz story, Pete Perry, who now lives in Stevenage, Herts, was sheltering from a bombing raid in 1943 when a doodlebug stopped directly overhead and a massive explosion rocked the ground…
"The silence after the bomb made it feel as though all the fighting had ceased. I have realised since that, for a few moments, we must have been rendered temporarily deaf from the explosion because, of course, the bombs had been continuing all the time.
Then the sounds came back with a rush – we could hear a gale-like wind rushing over the top of our Anderson shelter, and we heard the smashing of glass above the sounds of the bombs and aeroplanes.
Then we all did a stupid thing, we left the safety of the shelter and ran outside to see what had happened.
The first thing we became aware of was the far end of our street. It was ablaze, lighting the night sky up with an eerie red glow. The doodlebug had stopped over the top of us, and glided down to hit the bottom end of our street.
Of course, many of my schoolmates lived in those houses, and I realised then that I wouldn’t be seeing many of them again.
It was a hard fact I had learned to accept at such an early age.
We then became aware of our next-door neighbour, Mrs Taverner, who had also come out to see what damage had been done. She was in fits of laughter, and we couldn’t understand why. In between giggles, she pointed upwards into the branches of the old oak tree that stood guard, like a sentry, over our Anderson shelter. There, hanging on the branches, were her net curtains. Looking back to her upstairs windows, we could see that the glass had been blown clean out by the flying bomb, blasting her curtains into the tree.
We, too, couldn’t help laughing, probably with relief that we hadn’t been hit.
The strange thing was that while Mrs Taverner’s windows had been blown out, ours were intact, yet they were closer to the point of impact.
After this bit of light relief, we all realised that the Blitz was still going on. British and German planes were still attacking each other in the skies, and bombs were dropping all around us – so we bade goodnight to our neighbour and returned to the relative safety of the shelter.
Less than half an hour later, we were surprised to find someone pulling open the hanging piece of canvas that acted as a makeshift doorway to the shelter and shining a torch at us.
‘Thank God, you’re all safe!’ came a familiar voice from the silhouette at the doorway. It was my Uncle Alfred. He had been invalided out of the Army after contracting tuberculosis, and had volunteered as an air-raid warden.
Apparently, he had been over the other side of town, when he received the news that Brettenham Road had been hit.
Despite his failing lungs, he had cycled five miles, to make sure we were OK.
It would be another two years before we celebrated VE Day on May 8, 1945, but I clearly remember the party when another boy let off a ‘jumping jack’ cracker under my mum Doris’s seat – and she really freaked out! I think she’d had quite enough of loud explosions by then!
■ Do you have a story you’d like to tell – fact or fiction? Email siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk