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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Esther Gardner of North Dorset Volunteer and Community Action on behalf of Bernard Mole and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's Terms and Conditions.

I was eight years old (1939) when WW2 broke out. One night we were standing on our local bridge when london was being bombed. My dad and I saw London on fire. An ARP warden told my dad and I to get off the bridge and go to the shelter.

Our house was burnt with incendary bombs and dad tried to put them out. He did after a while.

Our next door neighbour had a removal van which we shared, and we would go to nearby Wansted Flats every night to seek safety from the bombs. Whilst in the removal van at the "Flats", we used to watch " Jerry" planes being picked up by the searchlight beams for thr Ack-Ack to fire at. The Jerry planes, machine guns firing, used to dive down the beams, putting out the lights. We arrived home every morning to survey the damage. "Jerry" also shot at Barrage Ballons to bring them down. If broken you could hear the attached steel cable whistling through the air and hitting thr ground. If a cable hit you, you would be severely injured our killed.

There was an Ack-Ack gun on the back of a lorry which travelled up and down the street firing an occasioal shot. We had no windows left in our house, as the gun had knocked them all out.

Eventually, my sister and I were evacuated to Ongar (Essex) and later in the war, to Wimborne (Dorset). After a short time, I was sent back to London for V.E. night, and later for Victory over Japan.

A "Jerry" bomber which had been hit, came extremely low over our house, we could see all his bombs that hadn't been dropped. Had he dropped his full load, he would have destroyed himself. We heard later the plane had crashed and the crew taken prisoner.

I was riding my bike down our road when a "Jerry" plane came down low, his guns blazing. I fell off my bike, and as I fell one way, the bullets fell to the other side of me.

My father was in the A.F.S. then joined the R.A.F. We had an Anderson Shelter at the bottom of our garden and had to bail rain water out quite often before we could use it. Dad took all the internal doors off in the house to put into the shelter to sleep on. It was very cold and wet and we had only a small torch because of the blackout restrictions.

When our school was flattened, instead of going to school, my mate and I used to wonder the street searching for pennies, we were quite successful. We had to be careful what we touched as "Jerry" dropped a lot of small items such as fountain pens, watches, tins of beans and "Butterfly" bombs, which if you picked them up, they would explode, possibly blowing of your hand or blinding you. We used to have sacks issued by the Council to collect silver paper and silver strips that "Jerry" dropped to interfere with communications. We got a penny for every full sack. I used to make 2 or 3 pennies a week and was able to treat myself to extra non-rationed items.
One day, whilst out scavenging, I found a glove in the road, when I looked inside, it contaned a persons hand.

We used to stand in our garden to watch the Spitfires have dog fights, and occasionally watch th pilots bail out when thy were shot down.

I went down to the pleasure gardens in Leyton to see a Messerschmitt that had been captured by the R.A.F., it was on display for the public, but without warning a "Jerry" plane came low firing his guns. Everybody scattered but no one was hurt.

You would see and hear, the doodlebugs coming. We would wait for their engines to cut out, try to watch where they fell, then waited for the terrific explosion. The worst ones were the V.2. rockets which you didn't hear coming. We were in bed one Sunday morning, the all "all clear" had gone, when suddenly, there was an almighty bang in the next street bringing down a great many houses. Very many people were killed.

We had a land mine descend, attached to a dark green silk parachute. It was hanging on a tree outside our house. The mine was dealt with by the local bomb expert and the parachute taken to Leyton Town Hall and displayed accross the wall.

We used to go to an underground shelter in Woodford which held around 200 people. We took flasks of tea and when the "all clear" sounded, listened to the wireless for the latest news.

When we came home, after spending all night in the shelter, we saw a house that had been badly hit, a body, from the waist upwards, lying in the road. The remainder, i.e the legs, were hanging over the end of the bed, pyjamas still on.

We were having lunch when the siren sounded. Dad shouted "shelter". We all left our dinner and ran down the garden to the shelter. We were entering the shelter when a "Jerry" plane appeared from nowhere, firing his guns. If we had been 5 or 10 seconds later we would have all been killed. We came out, after hearing the "all clear" and saw the bullet holes in the wall and back door.

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