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This story was submitted to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War site by ^{About links} on behalf of Norman Bald and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was about five or six at the start of the war. My father was a fire-watcher.

I remember my parents taking me to a concert in Leith town hall. During the concert an air raid started, and everybody rushed into the shelter next to the hall. We heard a CRUMP! And when we came out, there was no town hall! And a tram car had been blown across tot he opposite side of the street.

We lived in Wellington Street, and bombs were dropped at the end of it. We had no Anderson shelter — there wasn’t room in the garden. But there was a shelter in the park opposite the house, with a wooden lid on the top and benches along the wall with room for forty or fifty people. There was a big naval base at the Firth of Forth and the Germans tried to bomb the Forth Bridge. I remember seeing Spitfires attacking the enemy planes in the sky over the Forth. I wasn’t frightened — I was excited.

At about the same time the girl who was to be my wife was living in Norwich and was fired at by a plane as she was walking down the street - machine-gun bullets flew all around her but miraculously, they missed.

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