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My older sister and I made our usual Sunday visit to our grandparents in Berry Lane Langdon Hills, they lived about a mile down the road. I was riding my large wheeled tricycle with me sister standing on the back, I was 5 and my sister was 8. It was downhill so I didn’t have much pedalling to do. It was the day war was declared.

My grandfather had been listening to the radio and as soon as he heard the announcement that war had been declared, he put on his tin hat and with his gas mask on his shoulder took us to the end of his lane and told us not to stop for anything and to get home as quickly as possible. We started off, me pedalling like mad, my little legs going like pistons up the hills with me sister on the back. Mother was waiting at the gate with our gas masks, firmly convinced, like everyone, that we would be bombed straight away. There was a feeling of fear and anticipation everywhere.

Every garden had to have an Anderson Shelter, large corrugated steel shelters partially buried in the garden. Ours was posh, we had bunk beds, hurricane lamps and a garden of forget-me-nots on top so it looked like a rockery from the air. Air raids usually occurred at night (Langdon Hills being in direct line with Tilbury Docks, Dagenham Docks and Hornchurch Aerodrome) so every time we had an air raid we had to pump water out of the shelter first, by hand. They could get quite cosy but were extremely damp, usually heated by paraffin oil stoves.

We still had to go to school daily and if we lived close enough we were allowed to run home during a lull in the air raid. However on two occasions I got caught in shrapnel raids and was found cowering under bushes screaming my head off. I was sent to relatives in Surrey for nine months recuperate.

My father was an A.R.P. (Air Raid Precautions) Warden. He spent very little time at home, either patrolling on this bicycle or in a concrete shelter at the corner of Crownhill/Lee Chapel Lane. The shelter was the operations room, it was a fascinating place for me to visit: There were lots of maps and photos of aeroplanes (for identification) and telephones. I thought my dad was a very important person and I suppose he was. Very often when he was patrolling, he would come into our air raid shelter and say, ‘Quick kids, come and see the dog fight.’ We would run outside to see our spitfires and the German fighter planes in close combat. Every morning the children searched their gardens for spent ammunition clips that had come from the fight. Later on when our bombers went over to Germany, we saw them returning home over the estuary, some so badly damaged that they didn’t make it back to base. The crews are buried locally.

Towards the end of the war, two V2 rockets dropped two roads away from us, my sister and her friends had been dancing locally and were the first to arrive at the scene but were unable to do anything. Two or three people were killed and one lady was trapped ion her bath; I believe our local doctor had to amputate her leg to get her out. There are a number of bomb craters (now overgrown) at Westley Heights and the surrounding Crown Woods.

Sometime in 1943, a German prisoner-of-war Camp was established at what is now a Country Park, situated on the corner of Crown Hill and Dry Street (near the large water tower). Eventually the prisoners were allowed out in groups of two or three, they were distinguished by large yellow circles on their uniforms. At first they were treated with suspicion, but eventually they were accepted locally. Quite a few people invited them into their homes for a couple of hours in return for gardening or handiwork. They used to make very good wooden toys for children. I believe some even married local girls.

The children were encouraged to knit gloves and socks for our forces and I often wondered who wore my knit-one, purl-one, drop-one gloves! I also used to walk miles collecting books and parcelling them up to send to our troops. I am the proud owner of a certificate from the Overseas League (Patron H.M. George VI) dated 1940 stating that I had ‘helped to provide Comfort and Contentment for our forces.’

Those years form 1939-1945 had a lasting effect on me as a child both mentally and physically. I hope that our grandchildren never have to experience anything like it.

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