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My first memory of the war was being in London when the air raid warning went at Kings Cross in late 1939, when I was five.

My next memory was of practising going to the air raid shelter behind Letchmore Road Boys’ School in 1941, complete with gas mask in a cardboard case. The shelters seemed to be just a thin roof covered with turf. We also practised being Spitfire pilots in the playground, with outstretched arms and the appropriate noises.

It must have been 1942 when I watched a two-engined German bomber going over our house in Letchmore Road with one engine on fire. It crashed, I believe, somewhere near Walkern; later we walked and looked at the wreckage, guarded by the Home Guard. My Dad, Arthur Woodbridge was a drummer in the Home Guard band.

In 1944 the town was humming with activity as lorries, tanks and hundreds of soldiers parked in Letchmore Road and in front of the Astoria cinema and the church — it was the D-Day invasion force.

In the spring my uncle, Sgt Thomas Earle, a Flight Engineer in a Lancaster of Bomber Command was posted missing, and my mother, Alice Woodbridge, listened every day to the long lists of names on the radio, hoping he was a prisoner of war. Later the dreaded telegram announcing his death arrived. My mother never recovered from this shock.

Late in 1944, I think, we heard a V1 buzz-bomb cut out overhead, followed by a huge explosion. It had landed near Pirton. The next vivid memory was of VE Day, with fireworks, singing and rockets directed up the High Street from bicycle saddles. Flags flew and the whole town was alive again.

This story has been submitted by Hitchin Museum, on behalf of Mr Woodbridge. Mr Woodbridge’s research into the service history of his uncle, Sgt Thomas Earle, can be found in this People’s War archive, Article ID A7234607.

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