Beryl’s Contribution (Eddie’s Sister On Eddie’s Accident) I was getting off the school bus with my sister Joan, when I saw Dad coming down the road and calling to us to get under the hedge. I was puzzled, because we were used to aircraft flying overhead, but we did as we were told. Dad caught up with us and told is, "I've got your mother and your brother in the hospital, and I don't want any more casualties." Mum had been visiting a friend for tea, pushing Eddie, who was three months old, in his pram, when they had been strafed by a German plane. Mum was wearing her wellingtons, because the roads were unmade. She carried her slippers for when they got to her friend’s house. Eddie was taken to the hospital, and Mum and Dad were walking across the fields when Dad noticed she was limping. She hadn't realised that she had been injured too. When I got home, the first thing I saw when I got into the house was Mum’s Wellington boot, full to the brim with blood, and my baby brother’s clothes, in a bowl of salted water. A year later, Eddie went into hospital to have the shrapnel removed. He was very ill afterwards, having contracted double pneumonia. He was in a ward with injured sailors for six months. One day Dad told us that there would be a surprise for us later. When I got in from school there was Eddie, sitting in a little brown waistcoat in the middle of the floor, chattering away. When he'd gone to hospital he wasn't talking, but the sailors had taught him while he was there. We couldn't stop laughing, it was so good to have him safe at home, and chattering away.