I was born in Hull, on the east coast of England a scant two years before the war began. The city was very badly hit by German bombers. Our house was directly hit on two seperate occasions but before the second time, when we were finally bombed out, I almost got killed in a daytime air raid. I was still a baby and out with my mother, who was just nipping down to the local shop for something, and she carried me rather than be bothered with getting out the pram. Just as she came out of the shop with the bread or whatever, the air raid siren went and at once the bombs began to fall. Despite best efforts, the enemy planes often arrived ahead of the local sirens sounding, at least around the docks where we lived. She made a run for it to try to get home but bombs were falling all over the place. I was wrapped in my shawl as she ran. She made it - but when she unwrapped me in the house she found a huge chunk of jagged metal, still hot, smouldering in the shawl in front of my stomach. Why it had not gone straight through me remains a mystery. A woolly shawl is not a lot of protection against horizontally flying hot metal fragments. To her dying day my mother thought it was a miracle and I was being saved for something special. Whatever this was, it still does not seem to have arrived. Now I am 88 I am beginning to suspect that she got that part wrong.
Any other stories from that time?
[Posted by Kevin, Sieska's partner]
