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I was born in 1936 in Loughton, Essex. One of my earliest memories is of sitting in the toilet listening to various explosions outside. At the bottom of our road were fields in which the military had dug trenches. Just across the fields was the River Roding. On the other side of the river was a balloon barrage, which I think may have been a target for German bombers. We used to play on the fields (which we seemed to regard as our very own private playground). By the edge of the river was a willow tree with a thick branch hanging halfway across the river. Someone or other had fixed a rope over this branch, and we had great fun swinging on it. On the other side of the river was a POW camp with (mostly) German and Italian prisoners. Security there didn’t seem to be that tight and the prisoners used to come across and speak to us children. They seemed nice enough young men.

In our back garden we had a shelter consisting of a deep square hole dug in the ground and an earth roof with grass growing on the top. We had fun playing inside this. When there was an air raid we rushed to the shelter, and I remember looking out one night and actually seeing a bomb falling. My father dragged me inside so I didn’t actually see it explode. It landed on the fields just beyond the houses and left a big crater. A bomb also blew a hole in a bend of the River Roding which we made use of as our very own swimming hole.

We kept budgerigars in a big shed, but as we couldn’t get food for them, they had to go. They were replaced by chickens and rabbits, so we had eggs and the occasional chicken to eat. I don’t remember if we ate the rabbits (I hope not). We had an Irish lodger, Archie, a lovely man who used to call me his ‘wee bairn’, and who grew vegetables in our back garden as well as having an allotment of his own just down the road. He used to take me to his allotment in his wheelbarrow, accompanied by our cat.

I went to Staples Road junior school and a girl from my class and her family were in their shelter in the garden when, unfortunately, it took a direct hit killing the whole family with only the cat escaping. We did have houses around bombed, but nowhere on the scale of, say, London.

As I recall I was never frightened in the least, I think because it was all I knew in my life as the war started when I was three years old. We used to see American films and think America was such a luxurious and exotic place. We watched them eating peanuts and popcorn and bubblegum and envied this because it was something we never had. We had special coupons for the occasional oranges, but I never saw a banana until I was at junior school. My father did one day bring home a few walnuts he had acquired from somewhere and at the time I thought they were coconuts. When one of the children’s fathers brought home a banana, the child brought the blackened skin up to the school and it was passed around for everyone to inspect. Ice cream was delivered to the local shop in Roding Road once a week and we all gathered outside the shop waiting for the delivery van to arrive.

It was good at the end of the war when we had the street parties, with long tables laden with food and dancing (which I loved). Sweets remained on ration quite a long time after the war, and I remember the day they were due to be off ration when I had my breakfast and ran to the sweetshop and found all the shelves empty — I was so disappointed.

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