South Ealing Bomb

I was a child during the second world war, living in the West London suburb of Ealing.
In the bombing of Autumn 1940, we lived in a little terraced house in Venetia Road. The siren used to go every evening, and the all clear would go the next morning. On the night in question, we were all going to sleep downstairs in the back bedroom (my Mother, my Gran and me), I on the sofa opposite the window, my Gran with her head against the wall, beside the window, and my Mother on a mattress on the floor in the middle of the room – my Father was away at sea.
We all went to sleep, and in the early hours, all was quiet, but I woke up, and realised my Mother was not sleeping on the floor. I called out “Mummy, where are you?” She called back, “I am in the front room, come in here”. She had decided to sleep in the front room on the sofa under the window. I went in and she told me to tuck down with her. No sooner had I done so than we heard a whistling sound, which we knew was a bomb, so my Mother pulled my head down and covered it. The next moment we heard an almighty noise, including shattering glass. When we sat up, the whole of the window had blown out, over what would have been our heads, had we not put them down.
When we went into the room where Gran and I had been sleeping, the sofa where I had been was also covered in great slivers of broken glass. In those days, radios were very big and cumbersome, and ours had blown on to the floor, where my Mother had intended to sleep, right where her head would have been. Gran was all right as she was tucked away against the wall. My Mum always said it was our “wartime miracle”. Afterwards, she spent the night making tea for the rescue workers and wardens. A land mine had fallen nearly two blocks away, demolishing a whole row of shops, where everyone
living above and sheltering in the basements was killed.

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