My First Air Raid

My first experience of an air raid took place on the night of 19th/20th of June 1940.It was a Tuesday/Wednesday when enemy planescame twice and dropped four high explosive bombs,two made direct hits on a school demolishing part of the building.I was staying with a friend and was in a room downstairs which had been reinforced as an air raid shelter.I was alone in the room,sleeping on a campbed.The bombs distorted the house and also put out all lights, I tried to get out of the room to be with the others but the door had been distorted, I screamed but could hear nothing,I was convinced I had been buried alive and passed out with fear,I was brought around with water being splashed on my face.I don't know how long I was out,but it was still dark when there was a ring on the front doorbell, it was a policeman, he asked for me, and they brought him to me,he told me my Father had been killed in the raid,he was the only fatality, My mother had died the year before.I was 19yrsold.I thought after a year or so I had forgotten that experience as I no longer had the nightmares I had been experiencing
I joined the A.T.S. a year or so later and was put into the signal corp. A
After training was sent to London to work, I was horrified when I found I had to work 6/7 floors underground in the lift shaft of an underground station,I begged I wept I pleaded not to be sent there, all to no avail.I was made to stay in what I thought of as a hell hole for almost 4years and was downgraded from A1 when I went in to C3 when I came out.I became a sickly person afraid of my own shadow,and as I have become older I get more and more panic attacks. I have asked the Government for help,as I cannot live in England anymore, having spent 11years in the White Mans Grave of W.Africa.I have to live where it is not so cold. But no one answers my pleas from the Goverment, So much for Loyalty.I love England.

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