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September 7th was a Saturday five days before my seventh birthday. We were living at 20 Tapley Street, Poplar at the time, very near the East India Docks road and thus very, very near the dock area. We had a couple of rooms in my Aunt Aggie's house. I remember it being a bright sunny day but at 4.43 p.m., the sirens sounded and took shelter. There had been repeated 'alerts' and a few actual bombs dropped during the preceding weeks. Something might possibly happen this time, but probably not.

In the back garden was an Anderson shelter. This consisted of some curved sheets of corrugated steel set into a small pit dug into the garden and covered with the earth it displaced. The shelter was four feet six inches high by six feet X six feet square with a small opening at one end. Most were customized by their owners, having bunk beds in some cases and a wooden hinged door, covered by a blanket during the hours of darkness so as not to show a light to the German flyers.
As at this time, the whole East End was up in flames I cannot imagine that the light from our single candle shining through the cracks in the door would bring down the might of the Luftwaffe upon us. Lighting was by candlelight and I can't remember what toilet facilities we had - primitive, I imagine!
I do remember my aunt digging a hole at the back of the shelter into which she placed a tin cash box containing her few valuables. Carefully filling in the hole, she placed a carpet over it and sat on a cushion on the carpet! No fiendish Hun (or relative, perhaps!) was going to get her treasures.

My father came home at around 5pm and joined us so that day there were eleven of us in a shelter designed to accommodate six. The explosions came nearer and nearer until at last they were upon us
and the bombers were overhead. I recall terrified screams from the women and children every time bombs landed near us (which was frequently) and everybody being thrown into heaps side to side by the concussion waves of the explosions through the earth. I know that I kept breaking into hysterical laughter which turned into tears every time there was an explosion. The bombing seemed to go on for hours and hours but now and again in an infrequent lull in the bombing, we had to open the door of the shelter to get fresh air.

We could hear and see the planes circling and dog-fighting overhead until it got too dark to watch.
The Germans used unsynchronized engines for some reason and their planes had a distinctive sound. When the first 'all-clear' finally came at around 8.15pm, my father headed for the nearest pub to have a drink to calm his nerves. For some reason he took me with him. When we stood outside the shelter the whole sky was aflame, a sheet of red, tall buildings near the docks were blazing with enormous flames reaching up into the sky, emergency services bells were ringing, the smell of burning was everywhere and a constant wind was blowing. Dropping from the sky were burnt flakes, pieces of charred paper and ash that had been sucked up by the firestorm. I remember picking up some poor woman's 'Prudential' insurance book that fell at my feet (At that time the agents used to call round weekly for the premiums and enter them into a book). My dad saw what I had in my hand, clipped me round the ear and told me to put it down. "That's nothing to do with you" he said, “That's other people's property".

Outside our front door, we realised what a narrow escape we'd had. In that area of Poplar, the streets were all small terraced houses with very narrow streets. Some of the houses in the street on the right, St Leonard's Avenue had suffered direct hits. The house immediately opposite No 20 in Tapley Street had been hit as had the house opposite in the next street, Burcham Street. If that German bomb-aimer had pushed the button one second earlier or one second later - Goodnight Vienna…………

We finally found a pub for the old man to get his pint, "The Star of India". it was called. I'm not sure, but I think the first one we went to, the Eagle, was a pile of rubble. Despite the chaos, the rubble everywhere and the smoke and fire I STILL had to stand in the street outside the pub with an 'Arrowroot' biscuit and a small bottle of lemonade because of the licensing laws. More likely it was because the men wanted to let off steam and couldn't 'curse and blind' with a seven year old in their midst! I went back to our shelter with my pockets filled with shrapnel from the anti aircraft guns as well as bomb splinters as souvenirs. Later that evening, back in the shelter, the air-raid warning went again and we took another pounding until the early hours of the morning. None of us could sleep; it was just cat-napping through exhaustion and fear, awaking with a start when a bomb exploded near at hand.

We had a few weeks of this, going to sleep in our beds and being transferred to the shelter when the sirens went, sometimes without knowing it, as we kids were fast asleep. Soon after that we found a 'billet' in the crypt of "All Saints" church in the East India Dock Rd. Local legend had it that the Luftwaffe would not bomb the church as they needed the church's spire as a navigational aid when flying up river to bomb the docks. In the grounds of the church a barrage balloon unit was sited. The vicar allowed people to shelter in the crypt and it was always crowded. There was a wide U-shaped passageway under the church with entrance and exit double doors with small alcoves leading off from it.

Once you acquired a bed space in the passageway, you held on to it! The luckier families graduated by order of seniority to’ home from homes’ in the small alcoves on each side of the passage that were empty. They were about six feet by six feet and had stone shelves, which made ideal bed spaces when made comfortable with blankets, and eiderdowns, lighting was from candles and oil lamps, though I believe there was some form of electric lighting in the main passages. The alcoves still containing the original occupants in their coffins were boarded off. They were very quiet neighbours in contrast to the rest of us, crying babies, fretful kids and terrified adults all talking at the top of their voices, or so it seemed.
We stayed in the crypt, night and day, for the next fifty-seven days of constant bombing occasionally going home to have a 'wash and brush up'. If the sirens went while we were at home during our attempts to get fresh clothes and a wash in the daylight hours, my mother would drop everything, bundle my year-old sister into her pram and with me clinging to the pram handle for dear life, often, it seemed with my legs horizontal to the ground because of the speed at which we were travelling, we'd run hell for leather from Tapley Street to the Church, a distance I suppose of about three-quarters of a mile.

At times during the night with all those people in the crypt and the doors at either end shut tight, the air became foetid. When this happened all lights were ordered to be put out and gangs of men waved the large double doors back and forth to create a through draught of fresh air. One young lad sitting at the entrance during one of these procedures during a raid received a stray bullet in the arm.
He returned from hospital a hero with his arm in a sling and the offending bullet in his pocket which he showed to all and sundry.
All we young urchins then tried for a seat near the doorways the next time the sirens went so that we could receive a 'wound of honour' and a spent bullet as a souvenir. I can't remember the toilet arrangements - just as well!! I think tea was brewed by a charitable organisation - probably the 'Sally Ann' (Salvation Army) and there was a mobile canteen at times in the churchyard but we mainly provided our own food and it certainly wasn't a cooked meal because there were no cooking facilities in the crypt. Rumours abounded down there, one in particular I remember was of an A.R.P. warden trying to get the occupants into the open air during a lull in the bombing in the early hours of one morning to get the crypt tidied up and fresh air circulating. He was immediately labelled as a ‘Fifth Columnist’ whose evil plan was to get us outside where the Nazi fighters could machine gun us!

We lived like that for about a year until being evacuated to Norfolk in the autumn of 1941. Trauma counselling?? Non-existent.... The nearest we would have got to it would be remarks on the lines of "You're alive, ain't yer? - Be thankfu!l. Plenty of poor sods who ain't" and as we didn't realise we were traumatised - we got on with it!!
However, even now, aged 70, if I hear the sound of an air raid siren on the television I become emotional and choke up, so there must be something in this counselling.

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