A Weekend to Remember

A Weekend to Remember!

It was late summer, the 7th of September, Uncle Fred and Aunty Gladys’s Wedding Day. A war-time, (before-posting overseas), wedding like so many other couples.
On Saturday morning we set off from Dartford, on the bus to Gravesend.
Then on the Thames ferry to Tilbury station to catch the train to Southend-on-Sea.
However we arrived too late for the wedding service so we went on to the reception, a small family gathering.
By mid-afternoon it was time to catch the train back home.
Then the air raid siren went so the trains all stopped for about an hour.
This made us late leaving Southend-on-Sea therefore it was early evening and dark when we arrived in Gravesend to get the bus back to Dartford.
We caught the bus to home but the air raid siren went before we had gone far.
The bus driver said “I will take you to Northfleet bus garage only as the bus has to come off the road”. As we got off the bus a car stopped and the driver said “Room for one only”, not much good for a party of four.
We were then approximately five miles from home with no option but to start walking.
We walked a distance of about a mile and half through Northfleet town to just passed Swancombe church at the bottom of a hill. The air raid seemed much closer so we went into a steel shelter at the side of road. There was just room enough for the four of us standing up. The noise of the raid echoed on the steel and the flashes from the raid lit up the inside of the shelter through the ventilation holes at the top.
Dad went to search for a better shelter. Soon he was back and we went across the road to a concrete shelter. On the way there we saw the glow of the fires on the north side of the Thames. The noise of raid seemed louder than ever. I will never forget the look of concern on the warden’s face when two young children appeared. There were some forms in the shelter; I slept on a form with my head in my mother’s lap.
With what was left of night we stayed in the shelter until daylight and the “all-clear”.
Soon we were able to catch the bus home. Just before home the bus was diverted round the back-streets because of an unexploded bomb.
At last we were at home but we had no gas or electricity.

Much later in life we learnt that on the night of the 7/8th of September 1940 the start of the bombing of London began in earnest.
We were very lucky not to have come to any harm that night.

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