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Mrs Knights' memories are submitted to the People's War site by the British Schools Museum, Hitchin with her permission.

My mother looked after my sister Patricia, my brother David and me during the long nights of the war as planes flew over Hertfordshire on their way to or from bombing raids on London.

We slept on the floor of the cupboard under the stairs, my sister and I tucked right under where the stairs met the floor, and our brother cross-ways at the high end of the cupboard.

Mummy sat in a deckchair between us, knitting seaboot stockings for the Navy all the time to keep herself awake in case something untoward happened. She had made rusks from stale bread. She kept them in a tin on the floor and ate them to keep herself going.

She got us off to school before she went to bed herself for a few hours. Our father was an air raid warden and was out all night many nights of the week — they hardly ever saw each other.

My mother was in the Women’s Voluntary Service. At the time of Dunkirk she went to Southend-on-Sea, serving tea to the returning troops.

One night father came in and woke us. He took us outside to see a red glow in the sky that he told us was London burning. He said we should never forget that. I never have.

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