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At 21 I was already married so I didn’t get called up. I wanted to keep busy so I got myself a job delivering mail with The Port London Authority. After three hours of driving I knew at all (or so I thought!). I had my own van and I loved it.

The doodle bugs started to come over soon after the war was declared. One day I was at ‘canning town’ and one came over, so I did a stupid thing- I got under my van. But I was lucky and they passed over without event.

I had to take the mail to many places in the docks, and when I had finished my rounds I was near a ship and about eight sailors were asking me for a lift to the end of the docks, quite a long walk really. I was not supposed to have passengers, but I said ‘jump in’ and I gave them all a lift.

Then one day as I was working, there was a raid, the Germans hit the docks. I have never seen anything like it, the whole dock was lit up, so many were killed. At the time I was in the Victoria Docks. One day I was walking down the gang plank of a ship, where I had to deliver mail, I saw what looked like a large fish, so I called a seaman over and he had a look. Sadly it was a young merchant seaman, he must have slipped on the gang way and fallen into the sea. He was only 24 years old and was on his way home for a while. Life was hard for us all, but so many people cared for each other which made life bearable.

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