![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.stephensnelling.com\/_images\/doc_harden.jpg\" "\\"Doc")
<\/a>Eric 'Doc' Harden VC<\/p><\/div>\n
In moments, we were back to the dark days of 1941 when air raids on London were a grim feature of daily life. As the story began to unfold, I asked Muriel what kind of shelter she was in: an Anderson, a Morrison or a surface shelter. \u2018None of them,\u2019 she sheepishly smiled. \u2018We had an Anderson shelter, but we were in the house that night the bombs fell around us.\u2019 She showed me a brief account she\u2019d written of her experiences:<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2026my mother, sister and I came out of the shelter to make a cup of tea during a lull in the raid. We were in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil when the bombing became very bad, so we went into the cupboard under the stairs to shelter. We heard bombs dropping nearby, and some of the windows broke and a couple of doors came off. Dad, who was on patrol, came in with an air-raid warden and found an unexploded bomb on the lawn in the back garden, about four yards from the house. It was one of a stick of bombs, of which one had hit a shelter in Clifford Road, and another had demolished the house diagonally opposite us in Nightingale Road, killing the two young children and their parents who lived there. We each packed three pairs of knickers and three vests and got out over the back fences as we couldn\u2019t leave by the front of the house because of ambulances and other vehicles at the house that had been bombed\u2026\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Just reading those lines took me straight back to passages in my own book about the Baedeker raids on Norwich. It brought it home to me just how universal an experience the blitz was. And right now, there seems no escaping it. Muriel\u2019s story may have been by way of a diversion, but it won\u2019t be too long before I\u2019ll be recording some of \u2018Doc\u2019 Harden\u2019s pre-Commando experiences, as a St John Ambulance man during the London blitz. A Kentish man from Northfleet, he grew up along the banks of the Thames, an area that suffered a great deal of bomb damage throughout the war. And before joining up, he was regularly called into action, driving an ambulance to scenes of destruction in Northfleet and beyond. <\/p>\n But, as I say, that\u2019s a story to come. At the moment, I\u2019m busy charting his battlefield services from Normandy to the Dutch-German border with the occasional \u2018blitz interlude\u2019 as BBC Look East, About Anglia and Norwich Arts Centre all prepare to mark the city\u2019s Baedeker anniversary at the end of the month. I\u2019ll keep you posted as to what\u2019s happening and when in future blogs, but, meanwhile, it\u2019s back to \u2018Doc\u2019 and a D-Day that would help remove the threat of air raids on our cities once and for all.<\/p>\n Get in touch: www.stephensnelling.com<\/a><\/p>\n Harden of No-Man's Land<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I suppose it was you might call a bit of blitz serendipity. There I was in the leafy suburbs of London researching my next book about a Commando medic who won a posthumous Victoria Cross when suddenly I found myself … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.stephensnelling.com\/_images\/victor_doc.jpg\" "\\"Victor")
<\/a>