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15 October 2014
WW2 - People's War

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Anderson Shelter Proves a Boon - to the Neighbours!

by brssouthglosproject

Contributed by听
brssouthglosproject
People in story:听
Audrey Hawes
Location of story:听
Filton, South Gloucestershire
Background to story:听
Civilian
Article ID:听
A3839835
Contributed on:听
29 March 2005

On Sunday, 3rd September 1939, I was standing with my mother at the kitchen table, and we were slicing runner beans, I can remember it as if it were yesterday. We had the radio on, and suddenly it came over the radio that there had been no reply from Germany to say they wouldn't get out of Poland, and so therefore this country was at war with Germany. I can remember my mother crying, and saying to her, 'Why are you crying, Mummy, Daddy won't have to go, he's too old'.

And then the ARP people came round and fitted us up with gas masks, we all had to have identity cards, and they came round saying, did we want an Anderson Shelter in the garden. This is a corrugated iron thing that was sunk in the ground and it was left for you to cover the top of it. And in the little block of houses that we were in they all said, ' Oh no, we shan't need anything like that', but my father said, 'we will have one, we might need it'. So they came round and dug this big hole in the garden and fitted us up with this Anderson shelter, and it was the only one in the block of houses.

And then one night we all went to bed, and it must have been June or July 1940, and the sirens went and we all came downstairs and sat in the middle room, because it felt safest. and all of a sudden there was this loud whistle, FSSWEE and I didn't know what it was, but my father did, he'd been in the First World War, and he said, 'My God, he's bombing, we'd better go out to the shelter'. And when we went out there we couldn't get in because all the neighbours were crowded in there! So we had to go back and hide under the stairs.

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