I found the following on the net from John Chudley''One of the changes brought by the Second World War was in the lifestyle of women who were required to take up employment, unless they had a strong reason for not doing so. My grandmother, my aunt and my mother all began working at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mattock Lane, Ealing. Gran worked in the canteen as a cook, my aunt and my mother worked as clerical officers. It was while she was "fire-watching" in the hospital tower that a flying bomb (V.1.) flew past her and buried itself in Abernethies Department Store in the Uxbridge Road only two hundred yards away. I can remember her telling how she watched as the many dead and injured were ferried into the hospital by whatever means available.Ealing was not particularly badly hit by the war, if compared with the east end of London or with some other English cities. Nevertheless, the bombing that did occur made an impression on young minds. I remember two or three houses being destroyed in Weymouth Avenue, about a quarter of a mile away from home, and a heavy hit on shops and houses in Northfield Avenue, close to the bottom of Windermere Road. This particular episode forced the Nos. 55 and 97 bus routes to divert along our road and it amused me to see buses passing our front door. On the site in Northfield Avenue a large round emergency water tank was erected and remained for the duration of the war, Other bomb sites I can recall include a direct hit on Shellshear's stores in West Ealing. A few small bombs landed harmlessly in Lammas and Walpole Parks and now and then an incendiary device would come down; I believe their primary function was to cause a fire which would then act as a beacon for bombers with high explosives. One such I remember at a shop close to a bus stop we often used; the smell of burnt and smouldering timbers is easily recalled. During one air raid a loud bump was heard on the roof of our own house and my father immediately thought it must have been an incendiary bomb, but as no fire broke out we assumed that a large piece of shrapnel must have landed up there. Nothing was ever found, so it may still be somewhere on the roof or in the garden. While I was at primary school, we were visited by an official who brought with him some dummy bombs and shells, which he warned us about, in case we came across one in the street or in the park. I can particularly recall the "butterfly" bomb, which he said we might find dangling from a tree.I was on Jacob's Ladder footbridge, West Ealing, with some friends of my own age one day in May 1945 enjoying my hobby of trainspotting, when a passing stranger told us that the war had ended. It was a strange feeling. I can remember wondering what peace was like.''
David Archer ● 6178d