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This story was submitted to the People’s War Website by a volunteer from Derby CSV Action Desk on behalf of Mrs Grey and has been added with her permission. She fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I worked in a high class grocers in the Harbourne district of Birmingham, and I used to walk round collecting orders from the posh houses. One day after there had been a bad air raid on Coventry I did my usual round and found half the houses had gone. I also remember going to Coventry to visit a cousin and finding there were no buildings left in the centre of the city — only temporary ones that had been put up.

We had an Anderson shelter at the end of our garden and one night we were in it along with my sister’s boyfriend. He went outside to see what was happening and rushed back in shouting ‘Duck, duck!’ but where could we duck? We did laugh. Next day we discovered two of our local shops had disappeared.

In ’43 I went to work in the Pay Corps where I met my husband and we moved to Derby when we got married.

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