My Mum Saved as a Child by a Soldier

Toward the end of the war, after my mum had been evacuated and come back -

Incident took place in Hounslow West, Basildene Road (she lived at 26 Marnell Way)

My mum aged about 10 walking with her little brother about 7.

They had been up to the shops for sweeties, had just turned into Basildene Road from Clifford Avenue. A soldier was running towards them shouting, they didn't know why but he ran and jumped on them.

Just then a bomb went off in the next street nearby and all three of them, clutched together, were lifted into the air by the blast - mum reckons they went up about 6 feet as she remembers.

They landed back on the pavement with a thump but otherwise OK. The soldier said 'are you alright kids?' and seeing they were he ran off toward the bomb damage. If he hadn't jumped on them and added his weight, they would have been blown away.

Mum thinks it either a doodlebug or a rocket - reckons it was a rocket as they would have heard the doodlebug surely.

It dropped in a street the other side of Basildene Road from Marnell Way as my mum lived at 26 Marnell Way. Her classmate Robert Lazenby was killed in in the blast but she can't remember the street name.

Mum and her brother ran home. Their mum had been sewing by the window in the back room. The back of the house was fine but all the front was blown out - windows were smashed, and they found their front door with No. 26 up it, halfway up the street. The roof tiles were blown off as well.

Oddly, her mum was saved because she was in the back of the house, but their neighbour, Mrs. Johnson, was saved because she was in the front, their house was all blown out at the back as though the blast had zig-zagged through the houses.

Without this soldier's actions, who knows - would my mum have grown up, married, and had me, or would she have died as a small casualty of the war.

The soldier would have passed away by now I am sure, but I wonder if any families remember him telling of the day when he jumped on two kids.

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