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We had an Anderson shelter in the garden, my father and a friend put it in, but it flooded. So my father and his friend then filled it in with 18 inches of concrete; I don’t know how they got it out after the war. We had bunks in it, and an electric heater, which was still working in 1985. The people next door had a Morrison shelter. There was a railway line at the bottom of the garden, and there used to be a gun on the railway wagon.

At Christmas 1944 we were visiting my grandparents near Reading. On Boxing Day we received a telegram telling us to return home because a Doodlebug had hit a house down the road and our house was open. When we got back, we found that some American soldiers had fastened the doors and put glass in the windows. American soldiers took over a garage near where I lived, I quickly learned how to say, ‘got any gum chum’.

At the grammar school I went to the prefects and other 6th formers used to fire-watch with the staff. On March 31st one year, they decorated the school roof. The head caned them all and suspended them for the day, including the head boy (me)... They put an umbrella on top the staff room chimney.

I remember wearing a gas mask, and you could make rude noises with them because they were rubber and they stuck to your face. My father was an ARP, and we had a stirrup pump for use if there was a fire.

I was at scout camp in Derbyshire, on VJ Day. We all got very excited that the war was finally over.

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