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The Peoples’ War
Recollections of a Wartime Infant
by Roger Lapwood

Being just two years old when WW2 started, I did not become aware of it until about 1941. I was born in the little village of Stambridge, about 4 miles north of Southend on the Thames Estuary in Essex.
We were very fortunate as my father worked on a small farm which grew vegetables and fruit as well as keeping pigs and chickens. Fresh vegetables, fruit, meat and eggs were always available. Most people roundabout kept chickens and rabbits. Occasionally, usually on a Sunday morning, a neighbour would come to ask my father to kill one one for them as they could not do it themselves.
My father, a veteran of the 1914-18 war, was the ARP Warden for the area and wore the usual blue uniform. This was different from my friends’ fathers who wore khaki uniforms because they were in the Home Guard. When I see Dad’s Army on TV I appreciate how accurate it is because that is how it really was!
In the house, we had an indoor air-raid shelter, called a Morrison. It was supplied by the Council and covered a large area of our living room. It was about 8ftx6ft in area and was about 30ins high. It was made of plate steel to protect us from bombs, which fortunately we did not get. My brother and I slept in it night after night.
In spite of the war going on when I was so young, I now consider my childhood was good and in some ways better than children of today. I could go where I pleased and have fun with friends. As young lads we would trade pieces of shrapnel and collect the silver foil dropped by the Germans to confuse our radar.
Around the latter part of 1944 and in early 1945, we watched the army water-proofing their vehicles and then driving them through a large lake. I now realize this was for the final assault landings by the British and U.S. forces on theFrench coast
After the war finished, my father would, on regular occasions, bring home to dinner at mid-day, young German prisoners-of-war, two at a time, who were working on the farm with him. Even as a child I was impressed by how polite they were to my mother and also that they had learned English. Moreover, they did not look at all like the propaganda had portrayed what we had been told was the enemy.

Roger W Lapwood

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