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This memory has been submitted by The British Schools Museum on behalf of Mr J Jarvis.

As a schoolboy during the war I have mixed memories - all overshadowed by the seemingly endless nights spent in our cold damp air raid shelter dug into our back garden.

We lived in the industrial Black Country 8 miles west of Birmingham and were a turning point for the endless stream of German bombers attacking Birmingham. How I dreaded the loud warning of the air-raid siren that meant my mother and I had to leave the warmth of our beds for the damp cold of the shelter, where we usually stayed awake listening to the deadly drone of airplanes and sporadic explosion of anti-aircraft guns.

My father was the local senior ARP Warden and so we were kept informed of the night's events - I remember the shock of hearing of a parachute land mine which devastated a council estate on the other side of the hill which caused many deaths and injuries and by comparison we considered ourselves fortunate, especially when we visited Birmingham and saw the devastation caused to that city.

As the weeks of this routine turned into months my health started to suffer with bronchitis and we gave up the safety of the shelter for the riskier but more comfortable larder under the stairs of our 'semi', which had a solid concrete floor and was about 2ft below ground level.

One night my mother and I had settled down during an air raid with the usual noise overhead of planes changing direction for their bombing run, when there was a louder than usual explosion and the floor seemed to bounce up a foot or so - obviously caused by a nearby bomb.

We were both shaken but unhurt - but not so shocked as my father who, soon afterwards, came to check on us. We were coming up out of the pantry telling him we were OK but he was initially shaken by the sight of my mother who had lots of what seemed to be blood dripping from her front. We quickly assured him that it was not blood but beetroot which had been soaking in vinegar in a dish on one of the pantry shelves and dislodged by the explosion!

My dad had to leave us to attend to a neighbouring house, the front of which was destroyed and cordoned off a large crater in the road opposite our house which rapidly filled with water from the burst main. There were no casualties, except from a neighbour opposite who sprained an ankle when he finally located the third bomb crater in his back garden by falling into it. He afterwards erected his Anderson shelter in the hole, presumably on the principle that bombs don't fall onto the same place twice!

The other amusing aftermath to the incident was that the houses on the lower part of the road below the crater had water coming out of their cookers when they turned on the gas taps - the gas displaced by the leaking water.

My only other lasting memories as a wartime schoolboy was of learning of the death of a much-loved uncle serving in Italy, of feeling hungry, joining the local Army Cadet unit and of walking to school before the 'all-clear' siren had sounded - kicking bits of shrapnel in the gutter, which were often still hot but much prized as a keepsake.

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