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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Helen Churchill from Three Counties Action, on behalf of Anne Hancock and has been added to the site with her permission. Anne Hancock fully understands the site's terms and conditions

At the start of the war we were issued with ration cards and gas masks — I can still smell the rubber. Food consisted of sausage meat patties, dried eggs and corned beef which was on ration and potatoes all of which had to be queued for. Mother made bread pudding, potato and onion pie and toffees.

We had a concrete shelter built in the back garden underground and when the bombing began in earnest, we spent our evenings with a radio, an oil lamp, a paraffin stove and slept on bunk beds. We never knew what we would find when we emerged in the morning. One day we discovered that the houses opposite had been bombed very badly, and all our front windows had been blown out by the blast. There had been a direct hit on Whitton High Street, and lots of shops had been raised to the ground with loss of life.

My mother and I learnt to tell the different engine noises of friendly aircraft and those of the enemy as very often the air raid warning did not sound so we were constantly on the alert and had to drop everything and dash for the shelter when enemy aircraft were approaching.

Later on in the war there were doodlebugs, as long as the engine could be heard you were ok, but when it stopped you had to run for cover as they just fell from the sky. One day I was in the garden when I saw a doodlebug overhead, then the engine just stopped and I was too late getting to the shelter and all the bread that had been put down for the birds flew into my face and the ground was visibly shaking. It landed in the street next to ours, in the back garden of a house next to friends of ours, but the two little boys were saved as they were in their Morrison shelter.

I was never scared and my parents never showed that they were worried. We stayed put all through the war, as my father was running a tyre and rubber company making products for the forces, and was not allowed to enlist. He joined the Home Guard and kept us amused with his stories.

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