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This story is submitted to the People's War site on behalf of my Uncle-in-Law's Mother, Mrs Florence (Babs) Shaw and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Shaw understands the site's terms and conditions.

Sitting comfortably in the garden, the weather was perfect; warm and sunny. Suddenly my peace was shattered and looking to the sky plane after plane passed overhead heading south. I lost count of how many. The Battle had begun.

Come the evening that was the main topic of conversation in the club we had joined in the vicinity. We made a lot of friends. It was as if everybody knew everybody and we got an offer from an off-licensee who told us if we ever got bombed out at any time, to join him in Chiswick High Road.

As I recall, the largest bomb fell shortly after on the Depository in Chiswick shattering it. Now I always had great difficulty with the black out, there was always a little gap in one window by the handle (I had already been warned by the Wardens). Eventually, I managed to seal it with one of my husband’s socks (which satisfied the wardens).

One very noisy night having laughed at ITMA on the radio, we decided to sleep in the passage of the flat as it only had two windows. After a terrific ‘boom’ we knew a bomb had dropped nearby, all our windows were shattered, and with glass everywhere we decided to take up our friends offer of refuge. We ran to the off-licence, still of course in our nightwear. We arrived and were welcomed and taken down to his vault. As the floor was covered in mattresses, it looked comfortable. We were not alone with many of our friends already there. The arrangement was — if or when a bomb fell and it rattled one or two of the bottles on the shelf, they had to be consumed by all. A procedure that worked very well.

When morning came it was time to stagger home, fortunately the weather was dry. We saw other people who must have taken shelter somewhere in similar clothing. We laughed at each other and felt as one.

On turning into our road, although glass was scattered everywhere, the first thing that caught my eye was my husband’s sock dangling on the branch of a tree. It had survived. I am now over 90 years old but the memory of that time still makes me chuckle.

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