A Personal Narrative Of My Life During The Blitz
THE BALHAM TUBE DISASTER
By mid-October 1940 the mêlée of the Blitz was coming to its end, but the bombs kept on dropping in Balham. As a retired bus driver my age, almost 67, all I wanted was to be in my home with my children safe and sound. But this was not the case, day-in-day-out I heard abysmal news about how people had died during the blitz. I was really worried for the safety of my family, even when I knew there was nothing I could do about it because my 2 older sons were on the battlefield. On the 14th of October 1940, I was shopping with my wife and youngest child as usual. The skies but everything was very noisy because of the waves of planes and anti-aircraft fire flying over our heads trying to keep the British airspace secure, but they didn’t succeed on that fateful day.
Out of the blue, the air-raid sirens began to chime and the high-pitched sound impaled into our ears making everyone frightened. My heart thrashed at a rapid pace and my daughter started bellowing as if she knew that the day was going to show its darkest side. Something just didn’t seem right; the wind began to rock the grass whilst the leaves unhooked themselves from the trees. The nearest shelter was Balham Tube Station so we quickly …show more content…
The time stood still and the ground trembled, we all knew something really powerful had gone off. A 1400 kg bomb had dropped just outside the station. And you could see that the lights had fused the ceilings and ground shivered as if an earthquake had hit the tube, adding to the already dreadful chaos. The fragments of the walls began to fall as you could feel the walls moving. People began to panic and some tried to get out of the station. No one was ever prepared for the avalanche of water that gushed down the stairs like a river in a desert. I blinked and the whole world seemed different. The station was a scene of panic and
By mid-October 1940 the mêlée of the Blitz was coming to its end, but the bombs kept on dropping in Balham. As a retired bus driver my age, almost 67, all I wanted was to be in my home with my children safe and sound. But this was not the case, day-in-day-out I heard abysmal news about how people had died during the blitz. I was really worried for the safety of my family, even when I knew there was nothing I could do about it because my 2 older sons were on the battlefield. On the 14th of October 1940, I was shopping with my wife and youngest child as usual. The skies but everything was very noisy because of the waves of planes and anti-aircraft fire flying over our heads trying to keep the British airspace secure, but they didn’t succeed on that fateful day.
Out of the blue, the air-raid sirens began to chime and the high-pitched sound impaled into our ears making everyone frightened. My heart thrashed at a rapid pace and my daughter started bellowing as if she knew that the day was going to show its darkest side. Something just didn’t seem right; the wind began to rock the grass whilst the leaves unhooked themselves from the trees. The nearest shelter was Balham Tube Station so we quickly …show more content…
The time stood still and the ground trembled, we all knew something really powerful had gone off. A 1400 kg bomb had dropped just outside the station. And you could see that the lights had fused the ceilings and ground shivered as if an earthquake had hit the tube, adding to the already dreadful chaos. The fragments of the walls began to fall as you could feel the walls moving. People began to panic and some tried to get out of the station. No one was ever prepared for the avalanche of water that gushed down the stairs like a river in a desert. I blinked and the whole world seemed different. The station was a scene of panic and