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This story was written by Edna Armknecht and put onto the website by Charlotte Gill at the Dingemans Centre in Steyning

Born 9-9-1927

War was declared 3rd September 1939 and I was 12 years old 6 days later. I remember so well when Neville Chamberlain gave the news on the radio. Mum and Dad cried as Dad had been a soldier in the 1914-18 war. Also my brother not yet 18 years old had joined the Royal Navy at 15 years old and was now somewhere on a ship at sea.

Some 2-3 weeks later land mines were unloaded from German planes being chased away from London and dropped about a mile away from home. Windows shattered everywhere but no one was badly hurt just a very large crater in a field in West Hoathly not from Ashdown Forest. We were so frightened. I was the eldest one at home at the time as my eldest sister was in service in the village and my brother was in the Navy. I had a younger sister who was 9, a brother who was 2 ½ years old and a brother of 2 months at the time. We were all supplied with gas masks and had to carry them everywhere with us, school etc.

There was a field with big oak trees in a row and the Dad’s and older boys dug a long trench and cut seats into the walls and covered it in corrugated tin sheets and earth. When there was an air raid we would all be taken quickly into the trench and the mums always had ready flasks of hot drinks and sandwiches. I was always scared but some of the little ones thought it was exciting and a game. It wasn’t funny getting up in the night with torches – of course no strong lights were allowed. I went by train with friends to school in East Grinstead, my first time in senior school. I lived only 2 minutes from the station (later called the Bluebell Line). If a siren went while we walked from the train to school in Delaware Road (a long walk) we had to go in an air raid shelter.

As the war progressed with bombing all around and later rockets and doodle bugs you got a bit used to all the happenings and crying when some of our local lads were killed and lost at sea. My own brother was on the flotilla boats in the Normandy landings. He came home on leave once with clothes he had been wearing for 3 weeks after being trapped by Germans on land. Sadly I lost this dear brother. He died after being on the Christmas Islands. He was on the Narvic which took all the fall out from the experiments of the atom bomb. We were very close. He died 3 days after his 39th birthday in Haslar Hospital in Gosport.

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