大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Janet Kowalska and has been added to the website of behalf of Beattie Turk with her permission. She fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was four and a half years old when war was declared and remember hearing the first sirens sounding as I walked home from Sunday School and not knowing what the sound meant.

My home was the village of Eastry, between Sandwich and Dover, so we were in the front line for seeing planes involved in the Battle of Britain going over. The German planes came over the Channel heading for London and were intercepted by Spitfires taking off from Manston Airfield, not far away. It was exciting watching the chases and dog fights, hoping of course for our planes to win.

Although we had an air raid shelter in the back garden we mainly went to a neighbour's cave/cellar which was more comfortable, being big and airy. The cave had been dug out of the chalk bank many years before and went under the house above, with the entrance door from the road. This door was always open when a raid was on so that the 'grown ups' could watch the sky and see how many planes were caught in the search lights and then hit by the guns fired from sites around the village.

For us children the war was exciting and as the village didn't suffer any real damage, we didn't experience any real hardships. We also took part in lots of concerts that were held to raise money to provide comforts for our servicemen.

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