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The war started when I was 7. My father was a policeman in Battersea, and air raid siren was on top of the police station. When the air raid siren went off soon after war was declared — they were being tested — my mum gave me a clip on the ear for messing about with it, because she thought I’d set it off!
We used to stand on Sutton Green and watch planes overhead, and of course we spent several nights in the air raid shelter. At that age you just used to take it for granted — it seemed normal to have dogfights and bombs dropping and flashes in the air. The wardens used to push you down the stairs into the shelters whether you liked it or not.
I was evacuated to Thrapston in 1940. We used to go to the local hall and sit on benches and watch Mickey Mouse films — that’s the sort of thing you remember. After a while I went back to Croydon. In 1944, a doodlebug fell just on the corner of our road. I woke up in the Morrison shelter, and there was nobody else in it — I crawled out to find that I was under the roof of the house, which was now on the ground floor. I was the only one who got out. I was evacuated again. When I came back, they were still sending doodlebugs, and this time the first one I heard I was out through the door and into the shelter — before that they had had no effect. You just accepted everything. We used to collect bits of shrapnel — every boy had a shoe box full of shrapnel. And the family were all very proud of uncle Fred who was a Royal Marines Commando.

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