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"This story was submitted to the site by the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Peoples War Team in the East Midlands with Harold Bowns permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

In 1940 when Nottingham was bombed we were living in Handle Street — only about three hundred yards or so from the Dakin Street shelter. Many people died in that shelter as a bomb was dropped on it. My dad was a newsagent and former miner. We had cellars where we hid during the raids and he’d erected railway sleepers to take the impact while the bombings were going on. After a while during the bombing raid where the Dakin Street shelter was hit, a local policeman knocked on the door and said we had to leave where we were because our makeshift shelter wasn’t safe enough. We were escorted to the Earl House public house on Carlton Road. We then went into the sandstone cellar under the pub — somewhere a lot safer than an ordinary house with sleepers for support. We sat on wooden benches along the side of the walls. The following morning we all went to school, being just seven years old I had no comprehension of what had happened. Amazingly two of the boys that had been in the Dakin Street shelter who’d been dug out also came, getting on with life, not being traumatised by what had happened. I can remember that for many days after we walked around the streets on Sneinton picking up Shrapnel and bits of still smoldering timber.

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