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It was September 1939, I was thirteen years old living in Portsmouth and World War 2 had just begun. By the time I was fourteen nightly bombing raids, and daylight ones too meant we spent every night in the Anderson shelter. My Mum said as we wearily came out "We must be the only ones left alive". Just as she said this, we heard a loud ringing of bicycle bells. It was the dockyard workers riding to work and letting us know we were not alone. Cycling to work one morning after a bad raid, the streets were quiet. There was a large hole in the road. I got off my bike to see what was down there. I couldn't see much so I cycled off to work. When I left work to go home that road was closed. I had been standing looking down at an unexploded bomb! I remember Dunkirk, and my older workmates who had sweethearts and Husbands over there, and the awful fear they had for their safety. Maddons Hotel suffered a direct hit, and all were killed, mostly Royal Naval personnel. Another direct hit on a cinema on a Saturday afternoon killed all the children inside.

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