It has been almost seventy-five years.
Seventy-five years and I still remember every detail of that time.


It was 1941. The Germans were attempting to overtake our city. After being bombed
consecutively for more than 50 nights, it became a routine. Every day it was the same. The
alarms would go off and everyone would rush into the shelters. The blaring noise outside,
like the shrieking of a banshee, would continue until the first bomb hit. The feeling that
shudders through your body is dreadful. The sensation begins with the explosive crashing
into the ground. Your whole body trembles along with the earth and the impact is felt for
miles. The buildings that are hit then start to collapse and crash to the streets, as if they were
only wooden blocks. The only thought you can form is who may have been in the building at
that very moment-maybe a businessman who was scrambling to reach the first floor, a
doorman innocently standing watch, somebody that you knew. That is what the
Germans counted on--our fear of losing a friend. They scattered the bombings around the
city so that we would have no knowledge of where the enemy would strike next, whether it
was next door or a mile away.

Then, the silence. After the explosive had dropped down, after pieces of our lives
destroyed, the worst part descended--the stillness, the quiet air that carried death upon its
wings. In the beginning we would venture out into the lull, but our families were lost as soon
as they stepped foot outside; for the enemy hadn’t stopped, were only waiting for victims to
come rushing out of the safe houses. We learned that the silence was only the calm before the
storm, so to say. For then the bombs truly dropped.


One such evening, hundreds of fire-bombs showered upon us. The blasts slowly
picked up speed until one after another, they rained down on us to no end.
We later learned nearly ten thousand of them were dropped, almost like confetti, that night.

But I am losing focus.

As I said, the explosives were being dropped every night. One afternoon, I had been sent
off to the store to pick up our food for the week. A simple task that was always given to me,
and it had never been a bother, going down the street and back with no problems. Before it
got dark, I was on my way home, paying no attention to what was occurring around me--until
the sirens began to shriek.

Unexpectedly, I became one of the many panicked people around me, shoved into small
spaces with no air and tossed around as a toy would have been, as if I was a small rag doll
passed between tight hands. No sound escaped my lips, but the momentum propelled my
body through the crowd. I found myself at one of the shelters on the outskirts of town, near
to my home. Shivering, I made my way into safety and took a seat with a worried family that
I recognized as my own. Small murmurs of amazement that I had made it to this exact shelter
were exchanged, and then we were quiet. Everyone became silent--quick breaths the only
noise we heard in the cramped, foreboding space.

Suddenly, the shelter shook. Pandemonium arose, cries, shrieks and whimpers to
accompany the orchestra of thunder-like bursts that surrounded us. We knew the bomb had
hit, nowhere close to us, but in the middle of town. Relief filled the air as whispers of
encouragement spread through the crowd. It calmed us, at least until the next explosion.
That one was so much closer--so close it felt as though it had hit us.

Imagine the loudest thing you’ve ever heard. Now multiply that by ten and you’ve got the
sound we heard after the projectile took out the row of houses, in almost a perfectly straight
line just a few blocks away. As soon as the shell hit, the shelter felt as though it was struck
by a seizure while tremors shook the ground below our feet.

Bombshell after bombshell went off, in varying areas of town. None shook our shield
quite as badly as that one, none seemed quite as shattering. The night passed in bouts of fitful
sleep, every so often we awakened to another explosion.

The next morning it was as if time had stopped. We stepped cautiously outside,
and were greeted with sunlight and destruction. Buildings all around us were ravaged,
sidewalks on which we had once played on before the battle had transformed into bits of
concrete. But London was still standing. Despite her casualties, she was never completely
destroyed.

The posters were still pasted to walls wherever we looked, the insignia of the crown
staring at us, telling us to “KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON”. I have no doubt in my mind
that we did carry on, just as we were told to.

We carried on through good and through bad. We carried on through doubt, through
destruction, and through death.










We carried on through life.