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Mr Radford's memories have been recorded for him by The British Schools Museum, Hitchin.

I live in Letchworth now. I was born in Hackney in 1937. I remember 2 factories in Hackney being bombed. Brother Bunn was a pickled onion bottling factory. A flying bomb hit it and the sky lit up. The following morning people were picking through the rubble with pickled onions everywhere. People had pickled onions with their main meals for days.

There was Polycotts, Jewish tailors who made army, navy and air force uniforms. When that was bombed I saw lots of people wandering about wearing new shirts, ties and jackets!

Our flats (Elizabeth House) are still standing, even now; they survived the blasts from the flying bombs.

We collected jam jars, scrap iron, shrapnel and German badges to sell. When a bomb went through the church roof people stripped off the lead for money.

Hackney marshes had anti-aircraft guns. All the collected shrapnel was dumped at the marshes, it was there for years afterwards.

Holborn station was bombed. A famous boxer was found dead in the rubble with a young child, he was trying to shield it.

Some nights we slept at Bank underground station. We slept in an air raid shelter with a chemical toilet and the toilet smelt awful.

There was a P.O.W camp at Chepstow. Dad came home with toys made by German soldiers. Dad knew an Austrian prisoner of war who was a dental surgeon and he took all my dad’s teeth out for him.

Granddad lived in Weymouth. I was playing on the beach one day and met a resident who told me about P.O.W’s from Jersey being landed on the beach. One German prisoner had a knife and stabbed a British guard. So the Germans were all lined up and every 7th one was shot — to teach them a lesson.

Tomatoes — I was ill and mum queued up for 4 hours to get me 2 tomatoes. The Grocer shop used to sell coal as well.

At Hackney Catholic School there were 60 of us in class. We used to put phosphorous in the ink wells as a joke as it caused smoke. There was a German bakers outside the school. When the teacher wasn’t looking we would creep out to get a bun. But one day the shop was closed. He had been interned at the camp at Victoria Park.

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