大象传媒

I was born in 1942 in Hainault, Essex, during the blackout at home in my parent's bungalow. My grandmother was there to help my mother but my father was away in the army.

Naturally I don't remember that, but my first memory, which must have been a few years later, is of sitting in the shelter in the garden with the lady from nextdoor also with us. We all had to squash up together to fit in to the shelter. There is no remembrance of fear because I was far too young to understand what was happening.

In later years my parents told me lots of stories about their experiences of the war. The reason that I and my brother (5 years older) were not evacuated was because my mother wanted to keep us all together. The bungalow was never directly hit but suffered blast damage from bombs that fell nearby, so using the shelter was essential. For instance, the front door was blown in, glass windows were broken and also glass wedding presents were smashed.

My older brother used to go out with his frients and collect shrapnel that they found lying around.

Luckily none of us was injured, but when I started school after the war, my mother said she felt sorry for one of my classmates because her father had been killed in the war.

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