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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Joanne Burgess on behalf of Tim Warham and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

I went to the air raid shelter to go to bed because we can not sleep upstairs. I had just nicely got to sleep when bang! Something woke me up and I woke up to find the shelter rocking from side to side. I was getting very frightened when I heard a sound like someone screaming then another big bang and then our wall came in and then went out with a jerk. Just after that there was a little bang and my brother said that he would have to go out as it was a firebomb which he would have to put out. While he was putting the incendiary out a bomb dropped and blew him inside the shelter again.

After a while it was all quiet then they came back again and started their tricks. There was a big explosive near our shelter and the sound of glass dropping all over our yard. My brother looked outside to see what was happening and he came back looking very scared. When we asked him what was wrong, he said he thought our house was on fire. When we heard this we got very frightened, and I started to cry and so did my little brother. When it had quietened down a bit my Mother went outside to see if the house was alright. Then Mother called to see if everyone was alright but no one answered. We thought we were alone and everyone had been killed but afterwards one of the ladies shouted to see if we were alright. We shouted ‘yes’.

They dropped a bomb and hit the cable of the balloons. The balloon hit the top of our house and brought some tiles down, then sailed to the top of our street and hit the roof of the public house and knocked a chimney and some of the tiles down. It landed at the top of our street right across the road on the pavement and no one could get down the street.

Straight after that another one came and hit the Binningtons down our street and the last of it broke our shelter door off. After that a policeman came to see if we were alright. There was not much after that, but during the all clear we heard a bomb drop and a lot of guns started to go but they finished. The all clear went and then the sirens again and a lot of firebombs dropped on Binningtons. They flamed up and set all Binningtons alight. Then a mine dropped on the same place when the incendiary had fallen. After that had fallen it became very quiet and soon after the all clear went.

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