Description
Mrs. Harvey remembers hearing the sound of enemy aircraft while on leave at home in Croydon, Surrey.
Pansey Harvey
Pansey June Harvey was born in London, England. In 1920, she came to Canada when she was four years old. When she was seventeen she enlisted and was sent to training camp two weeks later. Pansey served with the Womens Auxiliary Air Force - Royal Air Force as bomber/fighter command and in the hospital as an administrator. After the war she returned to Canada where she was married and had three daughters.
Transcript
When I used to come home on leave, my parents were living in Croydon, Surrey, which is just on the borders of London. You could hear these planes coming over and each plane, German plane, had a distinct sound. You’d hear “Mmm...Mmm...Mmm...Mmm” and they would sound the sirens then you’d run for shelter.And I can remember being on leave and this was in Balham, South West 12 London, and everybody there in London would run for the underground train shelter. There was 219 people gassed and drowned in the Balham underground station because a bomb had gone right through the centre of the street where the gas mains were and the underground tracks and tunnels were flooded. And they had to close it off, I think it was from Kennington, from Balham to Kennington which was right in London. They had to close the underground off.