Wartime Memory

A Memory of Woodford Green.

Not sure of the date but I remember the church being destroyed. I had just become old enough to join the fire service as a youth messenger and I was in the fire station at the top of Snakes Lane when the incident occurred. The engines turned out and when I got home I was severely told off by my mother as we had passed her clearing up the shattered glass in Johnston Road and I had not jumped off the engine to help. We were running the Cofee Bean Cafe at the time, during the air raids we took urns of tea down the shelters during the night. But I found out how hard cows are, cycling as fast as possibly heading down to the Fire Station after an alert one night and ran straight into a cow's belly - I was picked up by an air-raid warden comatose, have been like it ever since!