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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from Swindon College on behalf of Iris Offley and has been added to the site with her permission. Iris fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I remember when the Prime Minister, Mr Chamberlain, spoke on the wireless telling the nation we were at war with Germany. My Uncle Tom, who was a regular soldier, was called up to fight. Then came the blackout strips which were stuck on to the windows, and black curtains. We were given gas masks at school, which were to be carried at all times — nasty things, they smelt dreadful.

Then came the indoor shelter — the Morrison shelter, it looked like a table made of steel and took up all the space in our living room. We were told to go under it when the sirens sounded but after a couple of years we got to the stage when we often didn’t bother!

We only had a few of bombs dropped in Swindon. I remember one dropping in Ferndale Road and another in Rodbourne, where about 5 people were killed.

Food was very scarce — I never saw a banana all through the war years. Very occasionally tomatoes came in the shops but people had to queue all day when a shop had a delivery. There were no eggs — only dried eggs.

One time I was really scared when I was riding my bike in Gypsy lane at about mid-day. The sirens sounded, and all of a sudden a German plane dived down and started machine gunning where children were in the schoolyard. The bullets pinged against the wall over my head and I fell off my bike into the ditch. I remember the dogfights in the sky between the spitfires and the German Planes during the Battle of Britain.

I remember the evacuees coming from London to Swindon — hundreds of them. People with a spare room were made to take one or two people, and some never went back to London after the war.

Then there was the carnage of Dunkirk. The soldiers that made it back were in a dreadful state, some only partially clothed, most were severely traumatised. A lot of them came by train to Swindon. People went there to do what they could while the soldiers waited to be transferred to hospital or to their barracks. My mother was a Red Cross Nurse so she was very busy at that time. My sister and I were left on our own a lot as my Dad was in the Homeguard. No matter what time the sirens blew they both had to report to their posts.

The D-Day landings brought the end of the war closer. It started in the early hours before dawn, the sky was black with planes towing the gliders, and some didn’t even make it to France. They were so fragile they broke free from the towing ropes and crashed into the channel.

When VE Day arrived it was lovely to see the lights come on. Five years was a very long time, everyone celebrated, we had street parties, fires were lit and at last the black curtains came down.

There was another shock in store when we first learned of the horrors of the concentration camps. I was at the cinema. ‘Pathe News’ was always shown in the Interval. We could then see the opening of those camps by Allied Soldiers — this reduced many men to tears. The poor souls were so skeletal, some had no clothes on and many had to be carried out. There seemed to be piles of bones everywhere.

Then came the release of the prisoners of war, and the horror of their treatment was revealed to all. It was another year before the Japanese surrendered. The return of the men who were captivated by the Japanese produced even more horrific stories of their treatment.

It was years before things were back to normal. But we never forget!

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