I HOPE you won’t mind me sharing a personal story from the Broadheath Blitz.
My great-grandma, Lille Burnett, owned the newsagents Burnetts at the top of Atlantic Street before and during the war (and for another two generations of my family, into the 1980s).
There’s a family story that during an air raid targeting Atlantic Street she was stood on the back doorstep of the shop watching the searchlights and explosions I guess.
During the raid a bomb landed, close enough to blow my Great-Grandma back through her door and down to the bottom of the cellar steps. Lucky to have only suffered, bruising and shock she got back up and continued to run the shop until the end of the war and beyond.
I served in Afghanistan in 2012, based in Camp Bastion, but doing a few patrols around Helmand. I am lucky enough to now joke that despite my service there, my great-grandma was ‘closer to the action’ than I ever was!
Anthony C Heaford, via e-mail
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