Machine Gunned On Churston Drive By A Young German Pilot

A Memory of Morden.

My Aunt Joyce (born 1931) used to live on Churston Drive. She told me this morning about how she was walking to school with a friend one morning during the war when a German plane machine-gunned them in the street.

They both lay down, as they had been taught. They weren't frightened, as it was so unreal. They each picked up a bullet to show to their school friends - to prove the story was real. I presume she went to Morden Primary School, as she said it was 1 mile away and she had to go through a wood.

Still, things could have been worse - the Germans specifically targeted Sandhurst Road Primary School in Catford. Over 40 dead.

Joyce and her friends routinely picked up shrapnel in the morning. It was taken as scrap metal. I presume it was from anti-aircraft shells.

She went with her mother to the pictures - but there was always the problem of what to do when the air raid sirens went off. They always stayed put! The film went on. The nights were an endless round of trips to the Anderson shelter in the garden.

Walking in the evening was a problem - no lights. They met one woman who had made it twice to the water tank in the pitch black. Where that tank was, I have no idea. It must have been some sort of local landmark.

She had a Polish school friend called Jozefina. She remembers her name as Siwnowska, but I reckon it must have been Cynowska. She was in tears one morning. The family had received a letter from her uncle. It contained a coded message: The Germans had cut off his tongue. I suppose it must have been a Red Cross letter from a POW camp.

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