"The Miracle on Wycliffe Road"

My daugher Maureen was born on the 8th November 1943 at 83 Wycliffe Road, Battersea.

The air raids had lessened considerably in the preceding months; so on Saturday evening (15th November 1943) I had put my baby daugher in her clot to sleep, which was at the bottom of my bed.

My mother suggested that I go to bed too and get some rest as my three sisters were out. I went to bed for, as I thought, a couple of hours and dropped off to sleep when the air raid siren went off. I thought I ought to go to the shelter, but it was a very cold night so I took my baby into bed with me. I had just cuddled her in with me when I heard this dreadful whooshing sound and a Block-buster came down. Before I could move, the whole window frame in my bedroom, glass, wood and bricks came flying out and literally fell across the cot where my daughter had been sleeping and all over my bed. We were both covered in filthy dust, rubble and glass, completely covered in debris in fact. How were were not both cut and bruised, let alone killed, was a miracle.I looked at my baby and saw two huge eyes staring back at me out of her tiny blackened face. With great diffuculty and care, I managed to get us out of bed; felt for my slippers and made sure they were not full of glass. Everything was chaotic.

My mother came rushing upstairs and we managed to get downstairs into the kitchen. I looked at my baby and cried, "she's OK, she's still alive" tears making tunnels in my dirty face. My mother cried too with relief that we were all in one piece. Several neighbours came running over to see if we were all right even though their own doors and windows had been blown in by the blast. Such kindness and care was second nature during those dark days.

My brother-in-law came round from his home on instructions from my elder sister and he was able to tell us that the Block-buster had hit a shelter in the next road to us. Fortunately, the shelter had not been very full, but several people were badly hurt. Once the "all clear" sounded, everyone helped us vacate myself and daughrer to my sister's place. My mother gathered the baby's bottle, nappies etc., and some clean clothes and off we went. It was a nightmare journey, but we reached my sisters with Maureen wrapped in a blanket and my short jacket and me with my coat over my nightdress. My sister and several of her neighbours took the baby from me and completely stripped her, bathed her and put clean clothes on her, having carefully picked out all the little pieces of glass and debris. Then they helped me too. How wonderful they were. Nothing was said, it was all carried out in silence, with me too shocked to speak. The horror of what might have been was all too clear, if the baby had been in the cot, she would have been killed. I believe a miracle happened that night.

The next morning my three sisters, who had gone to the pictures the night before and missed all the "excitement", came round to see us and said "Hey, you're famous!" Apparently, they had spoken to three American soldiers as they made their way round who had asked them what had happened to the baby that had been blown up a chimney! It appears that news had spread about the week old baby and her mother who had been rescued the night before and there were quite a lot of people who came to look at the house where this tiny baby had been "blown up the chimney". My sisters could not believe how we had survived without a scratch. Well, we did and I am now the proud grandmother of my daugher's two lovely sons.

My parents were re-housed along with several of our neighbours. Fortunately, we all survived the war, even our chickens which my dad was rearing for Christmas that year of 1943.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.