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This story was submitted to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War site by Wymondham Learning Centre on behalf of the author who fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

During World War II I lived with my parents, older sister and younger brother in a small village called Haveringland in Norfolk. I was always called Molly, My grandad had a cow with that name and wanted me to be called the same. We lived in a cottage with space all around, meadows and a park. We were on rations and had hand down clothes. We had a big garden and grew vegetables and kept chickens and rabbits. Mum was at a fete one day and won two ducks which she carried home in a box. They were kept in the garden and she always made them a hot meal at night. We picked dandelion heads and elderberries for Mum to make wine and jam.

There were six houses in our yard and all the boys were in the forces. They would not take my brother. I think it was because he had webbed fingers. He became a carpenter and went off to London to work.

Dad dug an air-raid shelter but we never used it - we prefered to stay in the house under the stairs. We made it comfortable.

My father was a baker’s roundsman. He drove a van around the villages and was chased at times for more bread — it was rationed. He was also a warden and had to see if anyone was showing any light.

I went to the village school. A lady came in early to light the fire there and if I was lucky enough to sit near it I was warm! When the air raid siren went whilst I was at school we had to hide in the passages. We had gas masks to wear which were horrible. The teacher and her husband lived in a house next to the school.

One Sunday my mum and dad went to church. I stayed at home to look after my brother as he had measles. We heard the noise of bombs and hid under the table. The bombs landed in the park, luckily my parents had stayed chatting at church or they would have been walking home through there just at that time. Another time we heard a lot of planes going over and found out later they had bombed Coventry.

We had six evacuees staying with us — two families from Kent — one person slept on a chair bed in the front room. They liked it so much in Norfolk they did not want to go home.

A big airfield was built with a lot of nissan huts in the parkland of the big house so we didn’t have the park to walk in any more. The post office was also knocked down and then we had to walk two miles to Cawston to the next one. We also used to walk to Cawston to catch a train sometimes to Great Yarmouth. Irishmen built the aerodrome. They always called at our house for food and drink.

One day a plane crashed near the airfield and the school teacher’s son and his friend went to look for bullets. They dropped them into a bonfire to make them bang. One boy got a bullet in his leg and died a week later.

A man called George Barker who was an air raid warden, was getting dressed, his braces got tangled which delayed him going out and saved his life, a bomb fell just where he would have been standing.

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