大象传媒

I remember during the war that our garden was dug up to grow vegetables.

We shared an air raid shelter at the bottom of our garden with our neighbours. There were about 10 of us. Our budgie had to come as well. We often had to stay there the whole night, sometimes from early in the evening. There was a bench on each side of the shelter and we had a candle.

We lived in North Staffordshire, sandwiched between Manchester and Birmingham and on a direct line to Manchester as far as the Luftwaffe was concerned.
There were big steel works nearby, where my father worked.
My father was always worried about damping down the flames. There were raids most nights and if the Germans had any spare bombs, they would dump them near us.

I remember my father and the man next-door standing outside listening to a doddlebug. It suddenly cut out and they both flew for the air raid shelter and got stuck in the doorway !
I also remember my mother coming back from shopping. She was so pleased she had managed to get one banana !

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