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[24 JUN 06]
MEMORIES OF THE BLITZ
I was born in Coundon in 1939. Although only a babe I can remember
distinctly that night of the Blitz. I was in my mothers arms, we had a
neighbour in with us, and we were under the table until the bombing
stopped and all clear given. I went out the front and I heard it said,
"look the city is aflame".
Later we used to go down the shelter when sirens sounded. I recall one
daytime that I was in pram, and my mother and brother John were walking
up the road and over the field opposite a German fighter came machine
gunning - we rushed in to a doorway.
In the field opposite to us close to Bablake playing field, there used
to be barrage balloon based. The crew were friends of my family and used
to come over spend time with us, and they used to take my brother and
myself over there.
Later on we used to go over to the hostel where a lot of Poles and Czech
and other nationalities lived and we collected foreign stamps from them.
When I started school at Southbank Road, on the way home we used to go
to a nearby shop and buy a one penny lolly if you could call it that -
it was orange flavoured ice that then had no wrappers - we had to put in
handkerchief, very tasty!
Of course there was no TV then so we used to make our own entertainment.
I remember we used to make dug outs, light fires in them smoking
ourselves out at times, and we smoked sorrel, played hopscotch, tinnet,
a game we used to play with house bricks, rolled along knocking top
brick off, and many others. We would go down to Radford with bits of tin
as sledges and go down the banks, all good fun.
I recall doing errands, and we used to buy 5 Woodbine, and the turf
cigarettes - they had the cards in which we collected.
I also remember my dad saying they went for a drink and had to use a
jamjar as there was a shortage of glasses then.
