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I lived in Portsmouth during World War 2 and we had to endure air raid sirens twice every night for some years. It was like this you see, the bombers were passing over the south coast of England on their way to the industrial areas to bomb various factories that were producing armaments for the services. They would drop a few bombs on us as they past on their way up North, then when the planes had cleared off, over the South Downs we would get the ‘all clear’ sirens and we’d be able to go to sleep for a few hours until they returned back home again at about 4 am 6 am. Then again they would drop a few more bombs, a couple of land mines or maybe a row of incendiary bombs. Up we’d get again and go to our hiding place under the stairs. We had no Anderson shelter like our neighbours did, as my father thought (in common with many others) that the war would quickly be won, probably by the end of 1939, and being a garden proud man he didn’t want his lawn dug up either!
Of course, some nights the bombs had Portsmouth Dockyard ‘written on them’, as we used to say, those nights the planes circled round and round until nearly daylight, bombing all the time. We were in the ‘front line’ (so to speak) as the coast line had many Ack Ack guns to train on the german planes. The noise they made was like a thunderstorm. I recall one night during a thunderstorm we could not distinguish which was made by nature’s electrics and which my man made machines. People used to say that when the bombs were dropped as the bombers returned home they were ‘using up whatever was left over from that night’ but our family thought it was more likely a plan to spoil the nights sleep of the people who worked in the dockyard in order to destroy morale. However, god in his mercy brought us all safely through, as a family together, and I do hope and pray that such a thing will not happen again.

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