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When I was the same age as you are now, I went to a school called Paddenswick Road School. It was called an elementary school; these days, it’s known as a Primary School. It was about 15 minutes walk away from where I lived in Goldhawk Road, London. We, the schoolchildren, always had to carry our gasmasks with us when we went to school and on the way home. If the siren sounded to say there was an air raid by the German bombers we had to run to the nearest shelter. Sometimes this meant we had to run back home, or go to a street shelter. If we were nearer to the school, we went there.

There were several kinds of shelters. The one in our garden was an Anderson shelter. A very big hole was dug in the ground and a shelter made like the picture in your book. In front of the doorway was a wall called a blast wall and we squeezed between the wall and the shelter to slide down into it. The floor was below the level of the garden outside. Inside there were bunk beds for my sister Judy and me as we would go down the garden to the shelter and spend the night there if the siren sounded in the early evening. Our mother and father, your great-grandad and great-grandma White were there as well. We didn’t sleep all that well because of the noise of the big guns stationed on the ground nearby, firing at the German bombers; and the beds were hard. On a clear, starry night your great-grandad White would sometimes stick his head out of the shelter and watch the English and German fighters chasing each other. These fights were called dogfights. Your Auntie Judy and I were very frightened when great-grandad did this because it was dangerous.

Food, water, candles and torches stayed in the shelter because when the raids were very bad we had to stay there for 24hrs, until the ALL CLEAR sounded.

There was a curtain in front of the shelter entrance so that any light didn’t show outside. If it did, people called A.R.P. (Air Raid Precaution) wardens cam round shouting ‘Put that light out!’ This was so that the German bombers couldn’t be guided to their targets by any lights on the ground. If you continued to show a light after being warned, you could be sent to prison. Great-grandfather White used to grow marrows on top of the shelter. We had to grow lots and lots of vegetables to eat, as there wasn’t much food, it was all rationed.

One of the other places people went to shelter in was the London Underground Tube Stations. When the bombing was very bad, people went down in the early evening and spent the night there. Everyone had their own space on the platform and there were bunk beds for the children. People were very neighbourly and helped each other. Singing songs like ‘Roll out the Barrel’ and other wartime songs was a very popular pastime and everybody joined in.

Behind our house and gardens in Goldhawk Road there was a park. On night, a landmine dropped there and made a very big hole. It didn’t hurt anyone but the blast broke a lot of windows nearby. The flying glass was dangerous, so people used to keep their windows criss-crossed with sticky tape, to stop the glass fragments flying everywhere.

Great-grandad White worked at the local Town Hall. On some nights he had to stay out all night in case any incendiary bombs were dropped around the area. These were bombs which set light to buildings and houses if they dropped on them. They were easily put out with a bucket of water and a thing called a stirrup pump, provided somebody got there quickly, before the fire took hold.

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