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I was a child during the war and lived with my family in Shrewsbury. I was about 10 when it started.

Of course, we had to collect all sorts of scrap for salvage and there were depots all over town. Our family volunteered to be a wartime salvage depot. We collected paper and cardboard mainly. We had a big greenhouse to collect it all in.

We used a child’s trolley and I would go all by myself to the neighbours to collect salvage from about 40 neighbouring houses on The Mount.

I used to go from door to door during the week and collect salvage from Monday to Thursday. My mother would pack it all into Hessian sacks. We also had a notice on the gate saying ‘salvage depot’ and people would drop more stuff in. A big lorry, perhaps from the council, came round every Friday to collect it.

There was a hotel opposite, the Beauchamp Hotel which has now gone. It’s a housing estate now. It was a very big building, red brick, with lovely grounds around it.

We were also opposite a big field which gave us a wonderful view across the North Shropshire countryside. We weren’t allowed to play in it though. It was private and the gate was always locked.

We used to keep pigeons as pets before the war. They’d come into the house and we gave them all names. When the war began though, the government passed a regulation saying that all pigeons had to be destroyed in case they were used to send messages to the Germans. Our pigeons were taken away from us and put down. My brother and I were terribly upset.

All pillar boxes were painted on the top with pale green paint. This was gas sensitive and would change colour in the event of a gas attack. I don’t remember what colour it was supposed to go, but it never changed anyway which was a good thing.

We had a Morrison Shelter too — we’ve still got bits of it! We took the dining table out of the dining room and put the Morrison Shelter in its place. It was about 7 feet by 4 feet and on the bottom, it had a thin, pliable iron lattice that you could put a mattress on. Then there were wire screens that fastened on the sides. They were ever so useful after the war for blocking holes in the fence and things like that! We also had blackout curtains and wire mesh screens lined with felt that were held to the window frames by swivel pegs.

I can remember Chamberlain’s speech giving the declaration of war. My mother and brother were painting a liquid coating which was called Water Glass on the window and covering it with fine mesh cotton. It would set hard and transparent. This was so that if there was a blast outside, the glass would not be able to shatter and fly across the room. We used it mainly in the dining room because that’s where we would be in the event of a raid, in the Morrison Shelter.

There were 6 of us altogether: myself, my older brother, my father and mother and our aunt (mother’s sister) and grandmother. These last two had come up from Exmouth, Devon, to stay with us, because it was thought to be safer to be in Shropshire than in Devon. They both stayed on with us after the war.

We used to make paper spills to save on matches. My grandmother used to make them by folding paper up and put them in a jar by the stove.

When the war started, we built a hen run and had 6 hens so we always had lots of eggs on top of our ration. My father, who had fought in the First World War and was now a head teacher, dug up part of the lawn at the front of the house to grow vegetables. A small part of the back garden had been given to me and I started growing vegetables in it. My brother also did a lot of work in the garden. He was 7 years older than me and was exempt from military service — I think he failed the medical.

We watched the planes flying over at night and the searchlights. There was one plane crash in the field over the river. Often, the planes were flying in the direction of Liverpool. I later learned that the Army were able to bend the radar beams so that the German planes thought they were flying over Liverpool but were in fact over the Berwyn Hills in North Wales. They bombed these empty hills, setting light to the heather, which caused a huge fire that could be seen for miles. Returning the next night, the German planes mistook this for the burning docks of Liverpool and bombed it a second time! They never knew how they’d been misled.

This story was entered by Deb Roach, with the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Robin Gibbons who is aware of and accepts the site’s terms and conditions.

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