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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Simon Harris and has been added to the website on behalf of Jean Chedgey with her permission and they fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

My father who started the war in the ARP, seeing some terrible things during the blitz before being called up into the 8th Army, wanted my mother and me out of London away from the bombings.

My maternal grandmother managed to acquire a cottage in Willesborough having been familiar with the ‘Eastender’s holiday’ life of hop picking. We went to live with her and found that her resourceful and resilient qualities would put us all in good stead. During our time with her she kept chickens, rabbits and bees. There was a wide variety of fruit trees and she grew vegetables. We enjoyed lots of fruit pies and honey, not to mention fresh eggs, fresh meat and vegetables, so we were very blessed.

My memories of the war are generally happy ones, since being so young I didn’t experience the hardships and loss that so many went through. But my father did experience dreadful and terrifying times and nearly died in Solerno.

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