大象传媒

It turned up one day looking like a set ofmassive single, corrigated sleds, as the council workmen struggled through the narrow passage beside the house, to dump them, and some straight bits, in the middle of our unkempt back garden. Mum, and big sister Squibs, asked the men what they were supposed to do with the unwieldly and heavy strip of metal'
'Anderson,' said the most intelligent looking of the team. 'Dig a hole - assemble.' and he was gone.

I found the instructions inside an envelope that had been tied to one of the sled-like sheets by a piece of string which I put in my pocket before announcing my find.

'We'll have to get Pop and someone else to dig the hole,' said Mum without a deal of enthusiasm. But the next team of council men arrived long before Pop was due home from work, and the big hole that was to take the partly submerged structure was soon dug and it only remained to assemble the parts.

A week later, many cuss words, as much unscrewing as screwing-up, a bit more wisdom about something called 'duck boards' and we were the proud owners of one of the first Anderson Shelters. We learned we were early recipients because the area of Surrey where we lived, and which today is encircled by the M25 and called Greater London, was directly beneath the expected overhead route of German bombers.

And so it proved. Not only were we beneath the bomb loads that many a crew decided top drop well before reaching the hazardous ring of Anti Aircraft guns round thebcapital, but we were also to be host to many a V1 Doodlebug that went astray, and V2 Rockets which were due tobe badly aimed.

But that was in the future.

We tried using the Anderson on a routine basis once the Air Raid sirens told us that night raids would become a routine. We soon learned that it was almost impossible to sleep in the cold and damp which caused blanket and pillows to absorb moisture until they had to be wrung out and new ones used daily.

Pop and Squibs then devised a routine to minimise our ( to be continued)

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