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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Simon Falla and has been added to the web site on behalf of Roy Caws with his permission and he fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Britain declared war on Germany two days before my fifth birthday. So I would have been seven in early May 1942 when my home town of East Cowes, Isle of Wight, was hit by an air raid. My father was employed at the nearby Saunders-Roe factory building Walrus and Sea-otter aircraft. This and the local shipbuilding industry made the area an obvious target.

We were living in Adelaide Grove at the time and in the garden we had an Anderson shelter located about forty feet away from our house. During the first wave of the attack, around midnight, a 500lb bomb exploded further down our garden. The blast caused a great deal of damage to our house and a line of bullet holes could be seen on the bedroom wall where the passing aircraft had been strafing as well as bombing. Our shelter was about halfway between the bomb and the house so we were extremely lucky to get out alive.

After this first wave we got out of our shelter and made our way on foot to nearby Whippingham. I remember seeing the barrels of the ack-ack gun there glowing red hot in the night. They’d obviously been busy.

There was a second wave of bombing some hours later that night. We spent this air raid sheltering in the cellar of a pub called ’The Blue Parrot’, I think. It was located at the top of York Avenue where the Red Cross building is now.

Due to the bomb damage, we moved first to Sandown, then to Cowes, and eventually back to East Cowes, living in Old Road. This was some time later in the war and I recall seeing the soldiers billeted at Millfield using ruined buildings for exercises, probably a rehearsal for D Day. Being kids, we used to nick their thunder flashes and have great fun setting them off. During this time we used to collect conkers for which the WVS paid us a bob a barrel. I think they used it to make toothpaste. I also remember huge blocks of butter and oranges being washed ashore at Osborne bay. They were ruined on the outside but perfectly edible in the middle so made a great addition to our rations.

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