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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Margaret Ingle on behalf of Margaret Harris and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

During the war I lived in a small village near Durham called West Kyo. I was at school at the time, and remember the Andersen shelter in my garden with a garden over the top of it to disguise it in case of enemy bombs!

I remember travelling back from school in the evening on a bus with no headlights, finding its way very slowly down the country lanes. There was a huge air-raid shelter in my Grammar school playground, but thankfully there were only a few raids and I don’t think she ever took shelter in it when at school — though they had several practices, just in case.

I also remember that there were very few sweets and we used to cut up Pontefract cakes into quarters to make them last longer. On VE day the whole of our house was decorated with flags, in fact nearly every house in the village was decorated and there was a competition for the best-decorated street. After the war I remember the mad queues for bananas at the local greengrocers.

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