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This story is one of many written for my son when he was small, and is based on what really happened.

Inga's little boy knows nothing about rationing, gasmasks, air raids, black-outs or bombs. He has plenty to eat and when he goes to bed at night he need not be afraid of his house being blown up.

But many years ago, when Inga had been a little girl, there was a war on which was started by a man named Adolf Hitler, whom some called Madolf Shitler, and things were very different. You could not buy bananas, hot water bottles, aluminium saucepans, chocolate biscuits and much else. Most food was rationed. If you ate your one egg or your ounce of butter on Monday you had to go the rest of the week without. At night, when it got dark, thick, black curtains had to be drawn across the windows so that no crack of light would escape which could inform German pilots they were flying over a town. When the German Luftwaffe flew over any part of England the sirens wailed, people fled to the nearest shelters or just lay down flat on the ground, wherever they happened to be. Many civilians were killed during air raids, especially in big cities like London, Coventry, Birmingham and Sheffield. In the morning Inga would often find shrapnel strewn over her garden, and these fragments of exploded bombs she has kept as souvenirs to this day. Some times she would peep out of the trench in the garden during an air raid and watch the searchlights overhead picking out enemy planes. The searchlights made a splendid display. The best part of the war for Inga were the daytime air raids, when lessons were abandoned and the whole school trooped to the trench in the playground. There, 10 ft underground, the children were safe. It was so dark and soundproof that it was impossible to know what was going on outside and so they were not afraid, and went on singing and telling jokes until the all-clear sounded, and lessons could resume. But at night during an air raid Inga was often afraid when she heard the drone of the German bombers overhead, and the bombs whistling all around, and the bang-bang of the anti-aircraft guns.

She was afraid of all those things but there was something she was more afraid of still and that was a bully in her class called Melvyn Ralph. Melvyn Ralph was the sort of girl who, if she could think of nothing to say or do would say or do something nasty. And so Inga avoided her as much as possible. But one day in break when she was playing ball with her friend in the playground the ball landed on Melvyn Ralph's head. A furious but quite unharmed Melvyn came running towards Inga with evil intent written all over her face. Imagine Inga's relief when the bell sounded just at that moment and the children had to return to their classrooms! But her relief was short-lived. "Just you wait till tomorrow!" Melvyn hissed as she ran past Inga, "I'll settle you!"

Inga hoped that tomorrow would never come. She lay awake in the night wondering what Melvyn planned to do to her. She was still awake when the siren sounded and her mother came to fetch her with her Wellingtons and warm coat and gasmask and they staggered out into the cold garden to shelter in the trench, past buckets of water and sandbags which lay in readiness in case of incendiary bombs falling from the skies like Christmas trees and causing fires on landing. It was a terrible raid. It lasted two hours. Madolf Shitler's bombs came raining down and the explosions and noise of falling masonry were deafening. Inga sat shivering in the damp, dark trench with her family hardly knowing what to be afraid of most - the terrifying air raid, or the terrifying thing that Melvyn Ralph was going to do to her the following day at school. Morning came at last. On her way to school Inga passed great piles of debris, houses with hollow windows and their roofs torn away, and fire engines and ambulances scattered all over the place. As soon as she arrived at school – which, she had to admit, she was a bit sorry had not been bombed – something different about it struck her. Clusters of children stood about in excited conversation. She entered her own classroom and at once looked for the fearful Melvyn Ralph. She couldn't see her. Where was she lurking? And then one of her friends ran up to her and cried: "Have you heard the news?"
"What news?" asked Inga.
"Melvyn Ralph's house got bombed in the blitz last night."
"They were sheltering under the kitchen table and the bomb dropped straight on it through the roof," said a girl nearby,
"There was blood everywhere," said a boy.
"The whole family was killed," said Inga's friend,
" There's nothing left of their belongings except the budgerigar's cage," said another boy.

And so they went on, until the teacher came in and in a grave tone of voice confirmed the death of their classmate, Melvyn Ralph, in the previous night's air raid.

Can you imagine how Inga felt? She could not believe what she had heard. Was it really true that her old enemy was dead, that never again would Melvyn Ralph be able to terrorize her ? And yet... she almost wished… that it had not happened…

Now the war is long over, and Inga considers herself lucky to have come through it alive. But occasionally she still wonders what poor Melvyn Ralph, the class bully, planned to do to her that day she never lived to see.

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