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It was near to the pool that the 'Doodlebug' hit. We both thought we were gonners that day, Gerry and I. The sirens had sounded but at that stage of the war folk were pretty blasé and only when you could hear the anti-aircraft gunfire did you casually seek shelter. Gerry and I were in the back garden when we heard the 'bubble - bubble - bubble' of the doodle bug. Remember, as long as you could hear the distinctive pulse- jet motor, you were ok. When it stopped, that was the time to panic! The noise got rapidly louder and suddenly, above us, there! There it was! Black against the overcast skies, very fast moving, and very loud, quite small really. We watched thrilled for about two seconds. Suddenly the shock of deafening silence!

Against all logic it sped on with us rooted to the spot -- and then the nose dropped. It was then that we ran, through the living room, through the kitchen to the ‘Morrison’ shelter in the small bedroom. The Morrison home shelter came as a D.I.Y pack and built up into a sheet steel topped, wire cage. It was probably about four feet by eight and ideally suited for a model railway layout, being only around four feet high. We, of course, didn't have a model railway outfit. Nor did we know of anyone at school that did, however Uncle George Spencer who lived with his sister Jane, our ‘Nanny’ in Oldfield road some four miles away in Willesden, he had such a treasure! A railway man all his working life and now in his seventies, he would at Christmas 'get the trains out'. But I digress!

We- Gerry and I, barely made it to the Morrison when came the almighty ‘BOOM!’ and in that instant we knew we were safe. The grape vine, surprisingly effective in those pre-telephone days, told us it had come down in the Park. This is the park of Jean Dowe and the swimming pool. This is where, incidentally, packets of crisps were on sale at one penny. Even with the rose tint of nostalgia and the changing scales of size that come with advancing years, these packets were huge compared with the frugal packets available today. Mars Bars have also shrunk with the slide of the decades. A kid could barely finish a whole Mars in the post war days, even if he could get his hands on one.

The Doodle Bug had missed the pool but had blown a 30 foot deep crater in the soft earth that could have swallowed two houses. Here the false scale of time does not apply as the houses of our ‘Avenue’ are still there. Remember, we saw them recently, Gerry and I, on our visit. Believe me, it was a BIG hole: dark brown earth, still smoking faintly when we arrived an hour later. There was no sense of wonder or fear, just an awareness of witnessing something new. The homogeneity of the even dark damp loosely sifted earth and the even summer green of the park sward.

Trophies! Bits! Shrapnel! These were the prize and we came back down the hill on our pram wheel trolleys with two large pieces of distorted grey-green sheet steel. Great finds: Greatest ever! But we were to discover that they were too big to get to school and they languished rusting against the garden fence for some years. Great finds but a huge currency rendered worthless by scale. The million pound note syndrome.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Raymond John Lawrence M.B.E and has been added to the site with his kind permission. Mr Lawrence fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Continue reading Mr Lawrence's story by clicking below:

• 1) At the beginning…
• 2) Life in the shelters
• 3) ‘Our Gang’
• 5) We kids were all pretty well behaved
• 6) We had our fair share of attention from the Luftwaffe
• 7) The ‘Golden Couple’
• 8) An evening’s entertainment
• 9) The ‘Underpant’ Episode
• 10) Where did I fit in?
• 11) The School Song
• 12) I wonder…

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