Historical Wwii Interview with Stella Richardson

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Historical Interview With Stella Richardson By: Chase Silver Presented to: Prof. Bob Mathisen American Thought & Culture 1:00 3/1/2013 “God has watched over me all my life, I have been saved from some incredible experiences and I feel very blessed because of that” -Stella Richardson. My Grandmother was born in 1932 in Portsmouth, England, which was one of the major seaports for England at the time. When World War II began my Grandmother was only six years old but even being how young she was at the time she is still able to recount about what it was like to grow up in a war infested Europe and nightly bombings. The first and only question I had to ask my Grandmother was where she was born. My Grandmothers father was a tailor and owned two businesses in the town, one of which had an apartment above it, and that is where my Grandmother lived up to the start of the war. Being that my Great-grandfather was in the British Army in a Calvary unit in WWI when the war broke out he understood the Germans. Because he was nervous for the safety of his family he purchased a house outside of town. This was an excellent move because in one nights bombing he lost both businesses. Each night around six o’clock the air raid siren would go off and they would have to go out to a dug out shelter at the end of the garden that her father had built. The bombings happened almost every night and would begin around six pm and continue until five or six am. At school my grandmother was taught how to put on and use a gas mask to be sure they would survive if there were under an attack. My Grandmother had to walk to catch the school bus and they were taught that if you even heard a plane coming you dove for the ditch. You didn’t wait to see who it was; you just dove due to the Germans constant strafing of civilians. One story my Grandmother told me was about a

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