Being a Lad during the London Blitz

I was 10 years old when the war in Europe finished. My father used to work in the telephone service as a night operator in Queen Victoria Street, London, EC4. He worked five nights a week and one day during the war he asked if my mother and myself would like to spend the night in the basement of Faraday Building, Queen Victoria Street with others so that if anything happened we would all be together. We did and all night heard horrendous bangs and the building shaking. We heard the wardens saying - Mr. so and so - your house has gone and this continued all through the night. In the morning we came out of the building and there was glass everywhere. A double decker bus was embedded in a huge crater. I had never seen so much destruction in one night. It was a sight I will never forget. I was told that it was the worst night of the London Blitz. I was then evacuated to Aston Clinton near Aylesbury, Bucks and the head of the household was totally against evacuees. He made me wipe my face with a towel that his son used who had scabies. I was very unhappy there as he beat me as well, and threatened me not to tell my parents about himself. I stood it as long as I could but in the end told my parents who then got me out of there and I went to Grimsby to stay with a lovely woman and her mother till the end of the war and my mother and father came to visit me whenever they could. It was sad to see them go back to London but I was treated very well by the people in Grimsby so I had a lot to be thankful for. I keep thinking of going back there to see where I went to school and my war time home. I think I only saw one bomb at Grimsby but the memory of that terrible night in Queen Victoria Street in London will be with me till my dying day.

Colin Spence

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