大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of Roy William Shedden, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was 9 years old at the outbreak of war in 1939. The siren鈥檚 sounded at the declaration of war, my mother made my brother and I go into the cupboard under the stairs, until the all clear sounded although at that time there was no immediate danger. When I was eleven years old, I started a paper round, as did most of my friends. At 6.30 in the mornings there was generally an air raid, and red hot shrapnel from anti-aircraft fire would often be raining down.

We did not wear any protective covering, and by some miracle we escaped being hit by the shrapnel. When it had cooled down sufficiently to handle we collected it as souvenirs.

I left school in 1946 at fourteen years old and started work as an office boy in a drawing office, part of my duties was to deliver drawings by hand some of which were highly confidential and myself and my associates were screened at a top level by M.I.5.

I was always very young looking but carried a reputation of being able to find my way anywhere. I had to deliver documents to many secret locations including Hawthorn in Wiltshire, an underground establishment.

I鈥檇 travel by train to the local railway station where I would be met by an army staff car with an A.T.S driver. I was then driven to a park. The park keeper at the turnstile was in fact a guard, we then walked across the ark to a bandstand, which was in fact a lift that carried us down into the offices below. I looked forward to the canteen lunches there, as we usually had bananas on the menu for pudding as people working underground were given a privileged diet.

When the doodle bugs started, I witness one flying overhead with a spitfire chasing it over Wembley with its guns blazing. When the V2 rockets started I came out of our house in park view, I was looking south and I saw a V2 rocket land and witnessed the full profile as it landed on Ascots factory, which was on the north circular road on the other side of the river Brent.

P.S. none of my family knew anything about Hawthorn until recently. I found out at a reunion at Coleeve RAF camp recently that Hawthorn is still used by the armed services.

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