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I was seven when the war started so I was at Junior School. I lived in the suburbs of London, in Middlesex. People used to like to call us Londoners but we refused to agree — we were nowhere near London!

I went to ‘Doctor Triplets School’ — nice name. Of course we had the air raids in 1940 particularly. The school did not have enough air raid shelter accommodation for all of the school, so we went to school in shifts. We’d go to school mornings one week, and afternoons the next.

If you were on the school’s afternoon shift and there’d been an air raid the previous night — you’d all go out looking for shrapnel — that was the thing that everybody collected.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Alvin Mansfield and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See more of Alvin's stories:

• Just imagine the headlines!
• Underground tunnels
• Keep going, keep going
• The Evacuation Line
• An extra egg
• What an anti-climax!
• In retrospect I was very lucky
• Swaps

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