The Surrey Comet of September 9, 1944, made shocking reading.

For Government censors at last allowed it to reveal details of the death, injury and destruction left during the previous 80 days of continuous enemy flying bomb attacks on Kingston, Surbiton, Malden, Epsom and Ewell, Sutton and Cheam and Walton and Weybridge.

In these seven boroughs, more than 64,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, more than 1,400 civilians injured and more than 120 killed.

There were direct hits on Surrey County Hall, destroying the council chamber and Assize Courts, and on Kingston Hospital, where two people were killed, 26 injured and all the patients had to be evacuated.

Kingston's Latchmere School was severely damaged, but pupils escaped unharmed because they had hurried to an air raid shelter before the bomb fell.

The Warner Bros film studio at Teddington went up in flames after a flying bomb hit the power house. Three of the people in the building were killed. They included "Doc" Saloman, the studio chief and one of the foremost personalities in British film-making at that time.

Those were some of the events of a mere 80 days. The area endured bombing for five years, from 1940 to 1945.

The last, and worst, assault on Kingston occurred at 2.35pm on Jan 22, 1945, when a V2 rocket, arriving at supersonic speed and with no warning, killed eight people and injured 120 people.

Do you remember those dramatic years?

Do you remember the early months of the war when Kingston, Surbiton and Malden welcomed refugees fleeing from the advancing German armies in Holland, Belgium and France?

Do you remember the meagre weekly rations and the British restaurants where "plain but wholesome" meals were on offer at knockdown prices subsidised by the borough councils?

Do you remember anything of the war years and what you were doing at the time?

And do you have any wartime photographs?

Write to the Surrey Comet, at Unecol House, 819 London Road, North Cheam, Surrey, SM3 9BN or email mjackson@london.newsquest.co.uk.

May 30, 2003 10:00