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"This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Berkshire's CSV Action Desk on behalf of George Frederick Corbett and has been added to the site with his permission. George fully understands the sites terms and conditions."

I am George Corbett and at the time of the outbreak of the Second Word War I was 5 years old and living with, of course, my parents, Frederick and Dorothy in Leytonstone — the very heart of the East End of London. Believe me, I could not have been born at a better time. Through the eyes of a child, those years were the most magical of my life. Not for me the horrors of war, I was far too young to understand, and my recollections are centred around the pure excitement and, unlikely as it may sound, fun that was to embrace me over the next six years.

World War ll started for me one evening, presumably towards the end of 1939, when Dad returned from work with a bundle of black material under one arm and a box in the other hand. He told me that we had to cover our windows with the cloth, because somebody had told him that he had to [I guess, at five years old, it would not have meant too much to me if he had told me who the ‘somebody’ was]. No matter how much I pestered him though, he would not divulge the secret of the box but said that I would have to wait until later….and it was worth the wait! It was a box of pink and white marshmallow biscuits and, what is more, I presume because of the noise Dad was making in fixing the blackout curtains, I was allowed to stay up until about midnight, which gave me plenty of time to eat my fair share of the biscuits.

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