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This story has been entered on to the website by Dean on behalf on John. They both fully understand the conditions.

In the early 30’s my mum, my dad and his sisters’ and their husbands moved to London from Eire. My Dad was a Plaster and My uncle was an engineer and a carpenter; a jack of all trades really.

I was born in 1937 and two years later the war started and my Dad got the other two signed up for the army before they got conscripted in different regiments and we went off to live with my gran in Orpington in 1942. My mum died of an unknown illness which really hit me and my brother hard. Our gran couldn’t handle us. We were a bunch of tearaways. I was 5 and my brother Alan was 3, too much for an old woman to look after so we went to live with our auntie who lived in Onoroke Estate, near Brockley.

We lived there for a while going to school and church there we lived in a block of flats on the top floor so it was always a hassle going down to the bomb shelter! There were no lifts in these flats even it they were they’d be out of order. One night we were on the stairs when we heard the terrifying piecing sound of flying shrapnel and the heavy shelling from the German planes. We went down to the shelter. We heard a bomb go off and we thought gosh that was close. When we finally got the all clear to leave the shelter only our half of the flats were left! So we couldn’t go back to them until they where declared safe which took months even years. So we went back to our gran’s until we where evacuated out to the country near Somerset.

All I really remember of it was the long (seemed like us at the time) walk to school I reckon it was around 2 miles. After a time in the country the government contacted us telling us that we were going to be shipped off to Eire to live with our grandmother and grandfather. When we where over there we got up to all sorts of mayhem; there were new places to be explored. As the war came to an end we where able to move back to Orpington. They didn’t repair the other half of the flats they just put a water tower in its place. It was a while before my Dad came back because he was injured. When he did return he married my step mum or as we always called her auntie Nellie.

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