大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Dunstable At War Team on behalf of Ken Malia and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The air-raid siren sounded. The usual family activity followed. That is to say father, in his role of family protector, issued his instructions, 鈥淨uick, into the shelter.鈥� The only thing was that the time was wrong. These instructions normally came when it was dark and when we were already in bed. But this was teatime on a lovely summer afternoon.

The air raid shelter had been dug and created personally by dad. It was properly lined and totally underground. Under the far corner of our garden to be precise; it was fitted out with bunks, seats, a table and lights. No scrambling down makeshift ladders because it had a stairway leading down to an inner door into the shelter proper. My father鈥檚 name should have been Anderson, except that Anderson could not have been as good as he was, at building shelters!

Certainly our neighbours thought so because several of them were invariably ensconced there by the time we arrived on air raid nights. All were welcome of course for what would be the point of survival if we were alone. Especially as one of them was doing his best to teach me to play the piano.

Sitting or lying in the shelter we were all periodically informed on the progress of the war as it affected Dunstable by my father. He, having built and maintained it, was the only one who never used it. That is except for my older sister who could never be awakened and so lay blissfully in bed throughout all the raids that never were. How envious the rest of us were.

So despite his herculean efforts, if Jerry decided to drop a bomb on 27 Kingsway, all the neighbours would have been saved but only four out of the six in our family would have joined them. My sister would have happily continued her rest permanently and my father would have joined her as he patrolled the garden making sure we were not invaded.

However, this time it was daylight and we were having tea and even the neighbours did not bother to head for the shelter. This made no difference to my father鈥檚 attitude. The siren had sounded. So abandoning tea, we all dutifully heeded the call to safety and headed for the back door. Just as we reached it we heard a loud roaring of engines followed by the sound of machine gunfire. Then we saw this German plane flying southwards along Dunstable High Street. Well it seemed like it was flying along the High Street but it was probably fifty feet up. The gunner was having a rare old time shooting up the shop windows. I think he managed to break some glass but did little further damage. He was probably doing this because he knew he was doomed and also in a fit of pique as our local defence team had fired their machine guns at him from A C Delco鈥檚 factory roof. They also failed to do any damage. We were given to understand that he was eventually brought down somewhere further south.

As a thirteen year old at the time this was the only occasion I know of when the Germans actually attacked Dunstable, although a land mine dropped in Luton but did not explode. We watched the London blitz or rather the sky over London lit up by the fires but we were not troubled again.

However, our ever-vigilant air raid wardens kept sounding the sirens regularly and our even more vigilant father kept on ordering us into the air raid shelter and we and the neighbours all survived.

My sister still does not know the mortal danger she was in for those five years when Germany failed to attack Dunstable; when she failed to wake up, while the rest of us trooped to the shelter.

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