I must have looked nuts!

I was on night shift once, and I came home, and I sat by the fire — (because the lady downstairs used to light the fire for me so that I had some warmth when I got in.) I sat there, and I’d gone to sleep.

When I woke up I thought “Oh, I must go to bed, I can’t stay here, so I went into bed. But a bomb had dropped down the road, and I didn’t even hear it! When I woke up again and sat up, all the windows were in, and all of my bed was covered with the ceiling and I was still there.

They were shouting for me downstairs “Dolly, are you up?” I said “Yes I’m up, I just got up”.

My husband was back from Egypt at the time, so they said “You’d better get over the police station and you’ll get him home” (because of the circumstances). So off I went, down to the police station, and spoke to the police to arrange it all.

When I got back and looked in the mirror I’d got all ceiling all in my hair. I must have looked nuts!

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the BBC Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Dorothy Cottis and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See more of Dot's stories:

• Doing a man’s job
• Red skies for miles
• I had to collect my own flowers!
• ”Boom!”
• They went to work in slippers
• ”Ping Ping”
• You had to have a laugh

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