I really need some help with this piece. I tried hard to get everything in while still keeping the word count down. In doing this I feel I have jeopardized the story in some way. I would REALLY appreciate some good replies.
Thanks Guys!!
BeckFletch. xx
I was eleven when World War II changed my life. My father had already gone to fight and my aunt and two cousins had moved in with us so we could help each other as the war began to threaten our livelihood. My grandparents had moved in with us before the war began due to there age, and because of this every free space in our house was occupied. Luckily I kept my room and my bed. It was here that the war destroyed what my family and I used to have as well as almost destroying me.
The siren sounded deep in the night. I lifted my head from my pillow to listen for the planes but only silence reached my ears. I had lost count of how many times the siren had woken half of England without there being need for it, so I lowered myself back down onto my bed and tried to sleep. The siren continued to roar as I smothered myself with my pillow to block it out. Little good it did, for I was unable to smother the sound and gave up. I laid there for a few more moments wishing, praying, for it to stop.
I did not hear the rapid footsteps as my mother approached my room. I only noticed her when she shook me from my dreary state.
“Jane, get out of bed! Can you not hear the siren?” my mother shouted to me over the monotonous shrill.
“Mama, I can not hear the planes. There is no danger. Now let me sleep, please!” I said in reply, knowing that an eleven year old should not speak in such a manor to her mother.
“Get up and go down stairs now Jane! If those Germans decide to drop bombs it’ll be the end of you! Now go!” she said as she went to fetch my cousins from the various different rooms they occupied.
I laid there in bed, waiting for the siren to stop and for everything to be ok. Only seconds later my mother returned with blankets in her hands and my grandfather by her side. He walked over to my bed and dragged me down to the cellar by the ear. I did not dare protest for my grandfather, a very loving man most of the time, would scold me if I ever dared to do so.
As my grandfather, mother and I crawled into the safe spot in our basement underneath the stairs, I caught sight of my petrified younger cousin. Most of her life she had been surrounded by war and this had lead to her being constantly fearful of most things. Every time the siren sounded she would let out a scream before running for the stairs to hide.
My family and I huddled together, cramped into the tiny space, and waited for the siren to stop. Soon after, it did. The silence was deafening, but with the silence came a new sound. The sound of thousands of tinny flies buzzing past my ears, but, I remember thinking to myself, flies rarely swarm in the cold depths of night. It was then I broke out of my delusional sleep state and realised what the sound really was. They had come for us.
“Mama, they have never come in such a number before. Why do they come now?” my eldest cousins asked my aunt. She did not reply, simply hushed the child of nine and returned her attention to the sounds protruding from above.
Moments later the first bomb dropped. I let out a little scream along with my cousins before collapsing forward over my knees with my hands covering my ears. Two, three, four more bombs were dropped in the distance. Five, six, they were getting closer with each explosion. Seven, eight, nine, the houses next to ours must have been flattened by now. My cousins were screaming at the top of their lungs. They wanted to leave but my aunt and grandfather held them close.
The small space under the stairs was just big enough to fit all seven of us; my two cousins, my aunt, my grandparents, my mother and I. We all waited for the next bomb to drop. Those few moments seem to last forever. I had started to think that maybe it was over and then it hit. The bomb must have been dropped right on top of us because even our safe spot seemed to collapse. I know this because as I was huddled over my knees, seeking protection for myself, a large wooden block fell on my back. From then on my recollection of any further events is somewhat hazy.
I woke up a week and a half later in an overrun hospital. The wood had broken my back but not severed the spinal cord. I was to stay in a brace for three months with as little movement as possible. If everything went as planed, I was going to be able to walk perfectly fine.
I never went back to the house. There was nothing to go back to. Everything was destroyed in the attack, well, almost everything. The only thing that stayed intact was a crystal bowl that my grandparents had given my mother and father on there wedding day. The only thing that was wrong with it was the two chips that were missing from around its rim. My steal frame bed did not even survive the barrage. My mother told me a large wooden block had fallen in the middle of it and split it in two. Thank goodness my grandfather had dragged me out of bed that night. I find it funny; the most delicate thing we owned survived a bombing. The steal frame of a bed didn’t. Ironic, is it not?
That night will stay with me forever. The fear it raised within me, the sheer torment it caused, will never escape from my dreams. In one way I am glad I never had to go back to the place I once called home. At least this way I can remember it the way it was. England did not stay my home for much longer. About a year later I was shifted to Australia and put into foster care. I never looked back. My family joined me when the war finished. We were happy in our new home, away from the memories.
I was eleven when World War II changed my life forever, but my story is happy one. My family survived. Many others did not. I will forever owe a debt to my grandfather and the nurses at the hospital and the people that gave me a new life in Australia. Without them, the war would not have changed my life. It would have finished it.
. Joking (kind of). Welcome to YWS!
but, that's just what you intended, the whole thing was heart wrenching to read, knowing that it happened to your gran like that!
that's an awesome story to hear first hand from your grandmother!
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