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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from Swindon College on behalf of Doris Rawlings and has been added to the site with her permission. Doris fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I shall never forget the day it started on 3 Sept 1939. The sirens sounded and all the people ran out not knowing what was going to happen, and everyone was very scared.

I was cooking the Sunday Lunch and as I had only been married for 2 weeks not a very experienced cook either. The shock of the 11 o’clock news resulted in me putting salt in the Rice pudding instead of sugar. I was trying to sort it out. What a day!

For a while life was quiet, but then the German planes started coming over every night and we had no protection from them. One night they brought a gun, which we used to call ‘Big Bertha’. When this went off it was awful as there was shrapnel everywhere.

My husband was an Air Raid warden at night — he worked during the day so I spent many hours on my own.

A landmine killed my husband’s sister at Christmas 1940 — she left 5 children but how they survived I shall never know.

My husband’s parents lived in a little place called Greenstead Green, which is quite near to Stanstead Aerodrome. During the war it was taken over by the Americans and the Flying Forts, better known as the BIY. We would watch them coming back from a raid over Germany, - they were flying so low the pilots would wave to us.

One night my husband was on duty, the planes came over dropping very fine wire and what with the blackout, it was very hard to see. He fell down a hole, but lucky for him, his mate was near and got him out. For years he didn’t tell me in case I worried.

We lived in Walthamstow — it was called Bomb Alley! They threw everything at us, rockets, bombs, landmines, doodle bugs. But we got on with our lives as best we could. People were very friendly and we made many friends, also lost some but had to take this in our stride.

On the day of the Battle of Britain, we were sent to our shelter — it was a lovely sunny day outside, but the noise of the planes and gunfire was awful. But we survived another day. I have such vivid memories of seeing people searching in the ruins of their homes. Our house was also bombed, and we had to spend many hours searching for somewhere else to live. It was hell.

So many memories, some happy, some sad and so many tears just waiting for the day we could live our lives together in peace.

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