My family, as Londoners, were at the centre of the bombing campaign that followed hot on the heels of the Battle of Britain. It was known simply as ‘The Blitz’.
My parents and grandparents spent plenty of time in the air raid shelters and many nights in packed London Underground stations, escaping the carnage above. Eventually my mother and her brother were evacuated and left London on a train, leaving their parents behind, to go to Wales, and get away from the threat. They joined literally millions of children who were evacuated at various points from 1939 onwards.
Although they were away from danger they both hated it there, away from their family and in the countryside. They were city kids! Like the children in the photo below they too would have been ‘labeled’ and taken to Paddington Station to board one of the trains of the Great Western Railway.
My next entry to this build is one of the planes that bombed Britain, and no doubt added to the tally of 43,000 lost Londoners.
From the point at which a German bomber discarded its bombs over London towards the end of the Battle Britain, starting the consequent retaliation and bombing of civilians from Coventry to Dresden, and culminating in the controversial strategies of Bomber Harris and Bomber Command and the German V-weapons from 1944, again throwing London into terror, world war 2 had become something that existed more horrifically for all European families.
To remember this time for my family, friends and so many others, I’ll be building the Eduard (ICM) 1/48 Dornier 17: ‘The Flying Pencil’. The kit decals offer the chance to build one of the planes involved in the Bombing of London and the many other cities attacked in late 1940.
More history and the start of the build soon!
