The devastation was terrible. We had a crater the size of a double-decker bus in our road and many homes were demolished. When the flying bombs, called “doodlebugs” or “buzz bombs,” came over [later in the war] and we heard the engines cut out, we had to drop into the gutter for protection. The sudden silence meant that they were falling from the sky and would explode.
It was very frightening. German pilots shot at school children who were on their way to school, as well as passengers waiting at the railway station.
A wartime poster, widely distributed in the UK during the war.
In 1942, I had a blood disorder and had to go to London’s St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, which is the oldest hospital in Europe (1123), and founded by King Henry VIII (1546). Airplanes attacked the hospital constantly, day and night. I remember one nurse being killed, and another nurse losing her leg.
Nearby, one of my uncles, Arthur Cornish, who worked for the gas company, knew that an incendiary bomb had landed on a gasometer, which was a large gas holding tank. My uncle climbed up the vertical ladder to the top of the gasometer to douse the bomb, thus preventing an enormous explosion. My uncle was very brave to risk his life for all of us.
Because the German planes covered the sky at 4:30 p.m. every day, we left school early to get home before the bombing. That meant that we had to go to school on Saturday to make up the time.
Even though our home had protective covering, our windows were constantly being blown in and out, and our ceilings were frequently falling down. We always had to have our gas masks with us. My sister and I amused ourselves by making rude noises when we were wearing them.
A friend of mine from London told me a story of his experience during the London bombings. One night when the air raid siren went off, he went into the London Underground (public transit system) for shelter, wearing only a raincoat in his hurry to get out of his home.
On the next day, he tried to go back into his home to get some clothes but the policeman outside refused to let him in. Nevertheless, my friend did enter his house to get his clothes in order to go to work. Suddenly, the chimney pot on the roof fell onto the policeman and killed him instantly.