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鈥淭his story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from 大象传媒 London Online on behalf of Janet Hopgood, and has been submitted to the site with her permission. Janet Hopgood fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.鈥�

During the war, my sister, who was eleven at the time, there was and air-raid siren went off apparently, but I was too young to remember it. My father was away in Germany, and they all went out to the air-raid shelter where there were bunks. My auntie was on the bottom bunk, and my sister was on the top bunk, and a bomb landed somewhere in Bexley Heath Broadway. My sister wet herself, and the first my auntie knew about it was when she felt it all running out of the ear and down her face! God it was funny!

The Shelter was a big concrete shelter in the garden. It was rounded on the top of the ground with bunk beds. My father took it apart and built a big brick wall around the garden out of it.

My father was a Sergeant in the Royal Artillery attached to the Twenty-Forth Scottish Regiment, but he didn鈥檛 say too much about the war. We definitely wanted to get back to normal after the war, but what I gather is that everyone was such a big family with a big community. I think we needed to forget about it and get on.

My Dad, came beck from Germany, but he knew the Staff Sergeant who used to have to stamp the weekend pass. Well he was a friend of my Dad鈥檚, so every weekend he got his pass stamped and came back for six weekends on the trot. The next weekend, his friend wasn鈥檛 there, and the new staff sergeant noticed that he鈥檇 been on leave for six weeks. My Dad convinced him that my sister was having a christening, but the sergeant wanted proof on the Monday, so when he got home, he had to run to see the Vicar to arrange a very short notice christening.

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