Home and Away — Alys Clarke

Typed by a UCN Community Volunteer, taken from “Semilong at War” (Workers’ Educational Association Project).

My father was on fire-watching duties at a notorious red-light pub, the Criterion in College Street. He loved it, and came home, sozzled. The beer was ration; no wonder the pub was seldom open.

An incendiary bomb was dropped nearby — the fire bucket wasn’t needed to put it out. I leave it to your imagination, with three sozzled firewatchers on duty!

A bomb was dropped on Billing Road Cemetery. Gravestones landed up in Newtown Road, a nearby Street. A friend of ours had one in her garden, with the words ‘I will never forget you dearest’ on it. She said ‘Neither will I, Norman’.

A plane crashed in Gold Street. My father fell out of bed went into the wardrobe instead of through the door. My mother shouted bomb has dropped on the house’. My father just in his shirt, swore, then went back to bed, and couldn’t remember it in the morning.

When times got a bit frightening, i.e. the bombing of Coventry, my mother said ‘If Hitler comes down this street, I shall put my hand up and say “Heil Hitler”’. She didn’t want to be a dead heroine.

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