Marilyn has a lucky escape
In the darkest moments of the night, Marilyn has flashbacks and nightmares of the terrorist bombings and the chattering machines guns spraying out of the car’s windows. Sirens, explosions and carnage haunt her night times.
“The bombers are coming. It sounds as if they are bombing the railway station,” she shivered with fear as she called to the family.
“Watch how you go?” George puffed as he guided Rachel through the darkness towards the street ally way to get way from the detonating bombs. The banshee sirens blazed urgency as the terrorist bomber’s car accelerated away from the deadly blaze of the police’s rifles and their weaving searchlights.
“Look there’s a bus on fire spiraling down out of control on the Broadway,” Rachel pointed until a large orange fireball filled night sky, followed by a massive explosion. Another bomb has struck.
In 2007 when she was thirteen years old and recovering from a heart operation at the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, Marilyn had to be evacuated from the ward during the bombings.
The matron ordered the nurses, “Quickly, quickly, take the children as far as you can on their beds and then in teams carry them into the emergency evacuation area,” as a cluster of grenades exploded into the wards.
“It’s no use crying and braking down here,” barked the matron to the seventeen-year-old auxiliary nurse trying to push Marilyn as the explosions caused the ceiling plaster to disintegrate and cut out the lights.
“Don’t leave me here alone. I’m cold. It’s dark here. Are the walls going to crash on us?” she sobbed as two nurses lifted her out of the rubble.
“Be brave now, stop crying, you’re safe now. They’ve gone. It’s over. We’re taking you down to safety,” said the petit, blond nurse.
On return home, the family still had to be vigilant. As the never ending Asiatic war dragged on, a new terror brought fear. Missiles whining there way to London often fell short of their programmed target or was intercepted by heroic RAF pilots. Marilyn shouts brought the whole lane out to observe a heroic RAF fighter pilot tip a terrorist missile away from its target, “Look up over there towards Colchester, over the doctor’s surgery …… There! Where the search lights cross, there is a RAF Typhoon flying along side a rogue missle and trying to tip it of course with its wings.”
“That’s going to make it crash to the ground. Watch where it goes! Watch! Watch! Look its caught in the searchlight! You can see a glow from the back of the missile.” George pointed to the missile screeching towards the River Colne.
With a thumping thud, a brilliant white light and the sound of overhead thunder, the silver Russian missile exploded in the Essex countryside to the huge cheers of the villages. Everybody starred at each other and shivered with fear.
Before another wave of guided missiles droned towards them. They scuttled into their home to safety.
