Submitted by Geoff Glover, Chalfonts u3a
An Early Close Shave
Our family I lived in a first floor flat over an Express Dairy shop and depot which also housed the local Air Raid Warden office, in Bromley, Kent, now a London borough. After seeing the glow from the bombing of London Docks in September 1940 ten miles distant our parents evacuated my sister and I to north Bucks. We returned home the following spring as things had quietened down. But by April 1941 sustained bombing of this part of SE London resumed; Biggin Hill, major Battle of Britain airfield, lay not far to the south.
Our beds had been moved to a ground floor corridor and storeroom because of the heightened bombing risk. Aged 8 and 5, my sister and I were well aware of the threat. My father was an Air Raid Warden on duty locally on the night of 13th April when the Luftwaffe visited us in earnest.
He later wrote ‘I went outside to keep watch and saw two men running and pointing upwards… to my horror I saw a huge parachute drifting over the roof of our building…almost immediately there was a great whoosh and everything came in – sandbags, wooden supporting beams and planks. Two colleagues were blown off their chairs, as in slow motion, across the room. My steel helmet flew off and I could hear Madge [my sister] calling ‘Daddy, Daddy’. Somehow or other I forced a way through the sandbags and debris and found that most of the dairy buildings at the rear were gone. The back door and entrance were blown in, the staircase to the flat was hanging from the wall and Geoff’s bed in the hall had collapsed with the head and foot fallen over him. He appeared to be asleep but was probably shocked. Madge had a bed in an enclosed store cupboard and was standing on the bed covered in plaster and debris. I heard a crashing noise and another warden forced his way through and helped me to carry the children down to the public shelter We wrapped them in the sheets and blankets from the remains of the beds. The two men I saw running and pointing were both killed. The land mine came down only about ten yards from us and it was a miracle that we all survived.’
Our home and associated buildings were reduced to a shell and the family car to a height of 2 feet.
Worst, my bright red pedal car was never seen again. We moved to a rented house within a few days as plenty were available and then returned to north Bucks. The rented house became our home for the next 20 years. Later in the war after our return to Bromley, I recall cycling to and from school and taking shelter en route under a schoolfriend’s dining table once we saw a doodlebug (V1) overhead waiting for the characteristic engine drone to cut out, signalling an early dive and explosion. Circumstances meant that I attended 4 different primary schools in the early 1940s one of which was demolished by, mercifully, a night-time direct hit.
The photos show the shell of our house later in 1941 and a photo of a nearby site where rescue work was still in progress the morning after the bombing.
