One morning I was sitting in my push-chair outside the Welling baker and general grocery shop which is the furthest but one on the left in the picture. My grandmother was inside the shop. I heard the sound of a plane and, saw one overhead. It was, in fact, probably a German VI. Bricks started to fall from the shop parapet. I thought someone was playing games. Next I remember blackness, but no sound. When I was again aware, my grandmother was standing by me, her hair and face white with plaster. She was laughing, and showed me a tin of sardines which she had been holding at the time of the explosion, completely flattened by the blast while her hand was unhurt.
The dome of the cinema on the other side of the road was without its copper cladding, and a railway signal (you can see the railway and Welling station in the distance) was lying on the embankment. There were bricks scattered over the pavement and three men lay covered with black sheets.
I was very upset at the sight of their shiny black shoes protruding from the sheets, thinking how sad it was that they had polished their shoes, as my grandfather did every day, and were now dead and beyond enjoying their beautiful shinyness. A boy of about 14 was sitting in the shop window, crying. His arm was open from wrist to elbow, and pouring blood. I think the bone was visible.
I had a slight scratch on my left knee.
I have rehearsed this memory probably every day of my life since then, and will swear to its accuracy. It has left me with the conviction that I have a reason to be alive, and that God must have some work for me to do.
Or, as Blessed John Henry Newman put it:
God has created me to do Him some definite service;
He has committed some work to me
which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission—I never may know it in this life,
but I shall be told it in the next.
My great fear is that I shall fail to know what task God has allotted me.
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