Bomb Alley Kid No 11

         bomb alley kid No 11

At school next day it was all the talk among the boys and girls,also it was one of the girls  or boys I dont rember who but we were ask if  we would like to come to her birthday party on the Saturday evening,but because me, and some of the other boys and girls lived some way away our parents said it was too risky to let us go,especialy in an evening as we would have to walk home about a mile to get home,One of my school pals called Len,lived down in a villiage called Fordwich,  so I presume he wont be allowed to go either, because his home in Fordwich  is about  one and a half miles away,so no one who lived that distance away would not be going but a few of our class friend who lived in or around Sturry would be going,one of  the boys who lived in Fordwich I beleive was allowed to go,I think he was older than us anyway.
              Once again that night the siren go off again warning of another raid. so again  Mum Dad and me have to move out of our nice cosy beds in the house, and back into the old  shelter down the garden, later that night we her the drone of the  bombers again going to bomb London,so we know that it will be sometime  before they return having been turned back because of the guns at Blackheath, if they are hit or damaged they will return, and drop their bombs  on their way back to Gremany,which means that Kent will get another load of bombs  dropped on it which were meant for London,Mostly they fall in fields around our part,and to-night will be no exception,shure enoughwe hear the bombers  approaching so out come the boufourt  guns on the lorries,and we can hear them fireing away in our road, they sound like  bombs but if you watch them you can see the tracers shells shoot up into the sky sometimes its hard to tell bombs from guns,but there is one bang that is too close for comfort and then another so Dad closes the shelter door,and we hear things  hiting on the shelter door. then we hear a tapping on our shelter door,so dad opens it up when he does this it looks like daylight because all the marshes are on fire,which has been caused by incendery  bombs, and the man who knocked on our shelter door is one of Dads firemen, and they need to use the fire engine that Dad drives to help put out the fires,so Dad has to go, but his face is covered in black soot when he looks back into our shelter,Dad has to go so he leaves me and Mum in the safty of the shelter and goes off with the other man to get their fire engine and trailer.not that they can do very much because there is only a lane down to the marshes, and I dont see the car getting very far on this.When Dad returns home later the next day after fighting the fire all night he is tired out and coverd in mud and wet through,he says that some men have come in from Fordwich but he says how they crossed the River Stour he has no idia.but they have. We dont have a bathroom in our house so Mum has to boil the water in a big copper bowl,on the gas cooker, and get  the big galvanised bath tub which we bathe in when we get a chance.while Dad has a bit of a rest,once Dad has rested, and had his bath he goes for a sleep although we have fire places in every, room we have on big fireplace in the kitchen and  that has to be cleaned with blacklead like a pollish only for fireplaces,then you have to clean out all the ashes from the previous fire before we can light another,but if we can keep the fire going we can usualy just top it up with coal and keep it going all next day.Dad has to go to his work somethime the next day to deliver flour around the villiages in and around Kent.Dereks Dad has also to go to work to deliver the vegtables, and such to grocershops..