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Shelters

Early in the war, when I was five or six, we were issued with the standard outdoor Anderson shelter. My stepfather and a neighbour worked all day, digging a hole for it to fit in at the bottom of our garden. Neighbours helped each other with this kind of task – we just happened to do it first. At hot bath, embrocation, and he would be able to assemble it the next day, he said. We trooped up the garden to survey their handiwork, and found the pit full of water.

The terrace where we lived was built on old shingle beach from which the sea had receded many centuries since. But it was very low-lying and the water table was just below the surface. Indeed, the water table was reputed to fluctuate with the movements of the tides.

In fact, the water table was so high that, at times, the whole road was flooded by water rising from beneath, through the shingle. The houses were built high with several steps, to keep them clear of the groundwater, but the gardens were flooded too at such times. Firemen would come and lay board walks, and we children were carried piggyback by them too and from our houses, which was a great excitement in the innocent days before TV.

No chance of a shelter here. Well, it saved the neighbours much labour, for the result would always be the same if a hole was dug. Some people erected their shelters above ground, under a mound. We were later given a Morrison shelter – a large steel table with mesh sides. My mother found a bedspread to act as a tablecloth. We put mattresses inside and slept under the steel top guaranteed to resist anything but a direct hit. (Direct hits never bothered us – we were always told we wouldn’t know anything about it.). Going to bed in the living room, with the wireless on and grownups talking, is the strongest feeling of safety and security in my childhood.

When my stepfather started digging the hole for the abortive Anderson shelter, he did so at the far end of our very long garden. My mother remarked acerbically that if we were to get there in time, would have to hear the bombers take off in France. In fact, when the Doodlebugs started later in the war, we could hear them taking off if the wind was from the South.

We also had shelters at school; large tunnels dug under the playground. When the siren sounded we filed neatly in and sat on narrow benches lining the walls. If we had time we took our little bottles of free school milk with us and spent the time in the dim light singing ‘Ten Green Bottles’ and ‘She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain’ till the All Clear sounded and we went back to our lessons. Maybe because in those days children were expected to do as they were told, or maybe because even at that age we were aware of the whole world being in turmoil, we just accepted that our lives would be disrupted too, and no-one cried or fussed or got upset.

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