Flashes light up the night. Flickering orange and red flames stretch high into the darkness. The drone of bombers, the crackle of fires, and the touchdown of explosives deafen. Acrid smells seep under doors. Searchlights comb the sky. Incendiary bombs fall in clusters called breadbaskets on London.
Soon after the sun comes up, Mom, hearing on the radio of the damage to streets near the Hounslow airport, places me in a stroller and pushes it the four miles to my cousins' home. Since enemy aircraft frequently targets trains and buses, public transport is dangerous and rare.
When we arrive on the street where my cousins live, two houses still smolder. With walls and roofs missing, they display the intimacy of what remains in bathrooms and bedrooms. A bright blue sofa rests on the sidewalk. I walk beside Mom to the front door of my cousins' home.
Almost as soon as Mom rings the bell, the door is yanked open. My aunt thrusts her baby into my mother's arms.
"Look at her foot," she screams.
Carrying my six month old cousin, Cynthia, wrapped in a blanket, Mom steps inside the cottage, and follows my aunt into the kitchen. I catch a glimpse of Cynthia's foot before I join the other kids to play. It's red and purple where the skin peeled off. Cynthia keeps crying so maybe her foot hurts. I wouldn't want my foot to look like that.
I pick up what happened in snippets of conversation, the way nosey kids do. As soon as the air raid warning sounded the previous night, my aunt and uncle took their kids to the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden. There they listened to the whistling flight of bombs and the cracking sound of anti-aircraft guns. Every window in every house is covered with blackout material. Some people are afraid to strike a match in the open in case it is seen by someone above. When the bombs fall, the night sky is lit up brighter than any Fourth of July. Blitz is the German word for lightening. Like thunder, noise, louder than day traffic on Fifth Avenue, follows the light.
During the night's raid, my uncle saw a fire flare up in his cottage. He and my aunt spent the rest of the night putting out fires with water and sand while their three kids stayed in the garden shelter. When dawn came, my exhausted uncle cycled to his job with the municipal water board. After a night during the Blitz, England, the land of rain and mists, had to worry about its water supplies.
When my aunt returned to the shelter, she found my two older cousins grumpy from lack of sleep and complaining about their baby sister who wouldn't stop screaming. Cynthia, like many kids, was bundled into layers of warm clothing, the top layer being a Siren suit (haute couture for air raids). To keep her really snug, a hot water bottle had been wrapped within the blanket around her. As she kicked out during the night, the water bottle top had come loose and the boiling water had poured over her foot scalding it.
Hospitals and doctors are busy with the seriously injured after last night's air raid. My aunt, who I'm sure visualizes her baby with a crippled foot for the rest of her life, doesn't know what to do. She hopes Mom who took a first aid course can help. I think Mom plays by instinct keeping Cynthia's foot clean and letting nature heal it. Her foot works fine now.
By the summer of 1940, Hitler ruled much of Europe. If citizens in Denmark or France didn't do what they were told, they died. Hitler wanted Britain. He could use that island as a launching pad for the US.
From September until November in 1940, London was bombed nightly. BBC.CO.UK and EX RAF.CO.UK are two of the many web sites that provide details of casualties in and weapons used on towns in the UK during WWII. On May 10, 1941, 3000 Londoners died in one night. During the London Blitz, 1,400,000 people became homeless and 20,000 people were killed. On the night of November 14-15, 1940, the city of Coventry was so thoroughly bombed that the Germans made up a new word—conventrate meaning to destroy a whole city.
A week after the D Day invasion in Normandy, the first V1 bombs landed in London, June 13, 1944. I remember Mom talking about doodlebugs. Other people called them buzz bombs. The V1 engine made a buzzing sound. Its destination was preset at its launch. Many V1's were aimed at Tower Bridge in the center of London. Londoners would go about their business with a twenty-five foot cross buzzing above them. As soon as the sound cut out, everyone ran for cover. The V1 had entered its terminal dive.
