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When the war started, my family lived at 12 South View, Bromley, a semi-detached house. During the daytime raids in the Battle of Britain, it was exciting to watch the fighting in the sky, shown by the planes’ vapour trails, but we youngsters became so inured that we noticed a perhaps less than a thunderstorm.

When the night raids began, we normally slept in a brick shelter with a concrete roof, which my father had had built just behind the house. (The other half of the semi had one too). Again, blissfully unaware of what other people might be suffering, it was fun to watch the anti-aircraft barrage, which became increasingly spectacular.

But on 14th March, 1944, a German bomber, chased by an RAF fighter, unloaded its 2000 pound bombs to help its escape, at approximately 9:15pm. One fell near by, killing a child, the next fell harmlessly in the gardens behind our house, making a huge crater and the third fell straight on our house. My father and brother had been watching outside and just got into the shelter in time, joining my mother and me. Our house and the other semi were utterly destroyed and the shelters were buried in rubble; the emergency services came to dig us out. The next house and the other side (10 South View) was largely destroyed too. If the bomb had landed nearer our shelter, none of us would have survived. This was the next to last conventional air raid before the V-1 raids began.

It was of course ghastly and terrifying at the time, but in retrospect, I remember two things far more. Firstly, the kindness and wartime spirit of neighbours; to share the burden of having us stay for weeks. My father stayed with one for several months. But when they are the V-1s began, it was impossible for us all to crowd into the neighbour's garden shelters and, moreover, my school closed because so many people went away, although it (Bickley Hall) had amazing reinforced cellars where the borders slept and, in daytime raids, our lessons went on. So my mother and I migrated to equally kind relatives far away. My brother was called up to the Navy.

The other outstanding memory is human resilience under disaster and deprivation, which we still see in the world today. We had lost everything we possessed, except what we happened to be wearing in the shelter. But within a year, by badgering every possible source and by sheer hard work, by parents had a new house (8 Vale Road, Bickley) and some furniture; my mother then spent happy years acquiring more things than she had ever had before. For myself, the effect of losing all my possessions was to kill my interest in having possessions and indeed money, except as a means to some more worthwhile end.

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