大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War Site by Joan Smith on behalf of Hugh Ramsey, a visitor to 'Dunstable at War' on 13th August 2005. It has been added to the site with his permission, and he fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was four years old when the war started and we were living in Arnotts Grove in north London. Father had a shelter built with a blast wall in front of it and my brother and I had bunk beds. One night a bomb fell on the house behind us and destroyed just the bathroom and the kitchen beneath it. No-one was hurt, but my father was woken by the noise, sat up suddenly, hit his head on the low roof above him and knocked himself unconscious.

In 1941 we were evacuated to St Albans, but I hated the school there, and after about nine months we returned. The bombed house had been neglected and the overgrown garden made a very good place to play, and we called it 'the crashed house'.
After school we would go looking for shrapnel and compare what we found. My father was in the ARP and would go on duty at Southgate. At school the gymnasium was made into an air-raid shelter by putting metals beams into the roof. I remember going to the cinema and when there was an air-raid a sign - Alert- would come onto the screen. I remember seeing flying bombs on the way home from the cinema.
to me war seemed a natural state of affairs - I couldn't remember anything else.

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