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I have a condition called retinal pigmentosa, this means that I was unable to see in the dark as a child, it has subsequently led to me having severe tunnel vision but when I was a child my vision was fine except for having poor night vision. Because this was the only way my problem showed itself nobody realised that I couldn’t see, including me. When we used to have bomb raids in the night therefore I was unable to get to or from the shelter, the other kids would be running about the place but I would have to put my hand out and feel my way back home to where we had an Anderson shelter. People just thought I was slow and used to tell me to not worry about coming home but just to go to the nearest house and ask to use their shelter, but this was even harder for me as because of the blackout I couldn’t see where the houses where and was only able to find my way back home.

We used to use an Anderson shelter which was a big tin box which you half buried in the ground, it was four foot by six foot and we buried it three feet deep and covered the top with grass, it had a very small door which meant that even when I got to the shelter I was sometimes unable my way in. I didn’t feel too scared about the fact that I couldn’t see because I didn’t think that anybody else could, I just thought ‘I must get to the air raid shelter as fast as I can’ even though we got bombed out in the battle of Britain. we had to move in with strangers for a few days after this before we could find a vacant house we could start to live in.

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