大象传媒

I was 6 years old when the war started and at school. I was issued with a gas mask in a cardboard box. We had to have it with us all of the time so my mother made a pretty cover for it. My baby sister was put in a large box with a window in it. She would have been one year old. Later she got a really colourful one, I think it might have been a Mickey Mouse one. I remember the lawn at school being dug over to grow vegetables and a shelter being built in the playground. it was a long brick building with one door at the end. We would practise going into the shelter weekly or daily, walking in twos.

At home we had an Anderson shelter partly below ground. It was povide in kit form with instructions, after the war we used it as a chicken coop. Father built bunk beds in it and it had a food cupboard with dried foods in it. Mother always sat in there knitting.

My father put soil on top of it and planted lupins, he said if Hitler flew over he would think it was a garden. I think of our Anderson shelter whenever I see lupins.

One morning when we came out of it all our windows were smashed and the door was blown off my grandparents' house who lived next door. We lived between Liverpool and Mancester so sometimes we'd be going into the shelter night after night for weeks on end. After the all clear we would be carried indoors and put in our beds.

By VE day I was 12 years old and I remember going into the market square and singing and dancing.

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jan Doran of the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Maureen Grosvenor and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

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