Charlotte's Blitz

After tea, on Thursday November 14th, I put on my pyjamas and got ready for bed as usual. I hoped that the air raid siren would not go off because I was getting fed up of being woken up in the night and rushing to the Air Raid Shelter. It was impossible to sleep there because of the noise - after all, I still had to get up and go to school in the morning!

About seven o'clock the sirens began to wail. It was a beautiful clear sky with hardly any clouds, the moon shone like a new penny and it was almost as light as day. Mum knew this was a bad sign, "We're in for it tonight", she said. "Let's get ready and go to the big brick shelter".

We only had time to put the dogs and the rabbit into the Anderson Shelter before the sky was filled with droning planes that flew low and menacingly over the city. I looked up and started to cry, they looked like giant black insects, come to eat the city in big bites. I grabbed my doll and hot water bottle and we ran into the brick shelter in the street.

Some other neighbours were already there, pale and frightened. Some of the grown ups sang songs to try to cheer us up for a while, but the sounds of the planes, the loud bangs and explosions, the whistling sounds of the bombs being dropped and the booming of the anti-aircraft guns soon had us all listening in disbelief. I have never felt so frightened.

The raid wasn't over until early in the morning and we staggered out into the road. We could not believe what we saw: The air was filled with thick smoke and fires crackled all around. Some groups of houses had disappeared completely into smouldering piles of rubble and some of our neighbours were missing. The road looked like a ploughed field in places and we scrambled over the rubble to see if there was anything left of our house.

The windows and doors were damaged but it was still standing. I could not go in because of all the broken glass so we scrambled around the back to the Anderson shelter. I was black and dirty but mum didn't shout. Sadly, Mum found that my rabbit Dixie had drowned because the shelter had flooded. Ruff and Tumble had scrambled to safety onto the bunks and were very scared and damp. We tied my dressing gown cord to their collars so they would not run away.

Suddenly Grandad Tony and Nanny Rita burst into the garden, they had hurried over to make sure we had survived the terrible blitz. We all cried and hugged each other. They told us about the terrible devastation of our city that they had seen on the way. The cathedral was still burning and most of the city centre had been reduced to ruins.

Granddad Tony quickly buried Dixie in the garden for me. She had been my friend and I cried. I cried for my rabbit, I cried for my house, I cried for the ruins all around. I cried because I was tired, dirty and confused about what had happened. Why did grown-ups fight? Why was there a war? I cried because I was hungry too.

Mum went to make some tea in the house, but the water and gas mains had been damaged in the raid. She made us tea using the water from my hot water bottle which she heated in a kettle over an open fire in the front room. This made us all smile, I loved my mum!

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