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I was five and living in Surrey, about 10 miles from the City, when WW2 began. I can remember the first siren as a weird uncertain wailing for no apparent reason, presumably created by winding something by hand. I can remember later on the erection of a tall siren post beside the Police box, which was regularly visited by policemen on the beat and had a telephone, accessible in emergency from outside the box. The next event was the imposition of blackout, with dire consequences if the warden saw a gleam of light. Windows were criss-crossed with sticky tape for the duration of the war as a protection against flying glass.
The threat of invasion brought military exercises, presumably by troops or the home guard, that I can remember seeing. The Battle of Britain was more immediate, as my father and neighbours built air-raid shelters, and before long we were taking cover in these. It was exciting for a child to begin with, but all-night air-raids soon became tedious, and the shelters had been constructed with bench seats, with nowhere to sleep. The sustained raids, first involving dogfights, with shrapnel falling, then later the bombing of London, which turned the Northern sky red, soon made it urgent to get some sleep. So my father, with neighbours' help, excavated a new, much larger shelter sunk well into the ground and about 6ft x 10ft and 6ft high (internal dimensions). The walls were about 12" thick, and the roof was of reinforced concrete then covered with soil. Some form of tanking against damp must have been inserted first, as I do not recall any serious damp problems. At the entrance was a dog-legged flight of steps to break any blast, and an escape hatch at the other end about 24" square.
In this shelter were four bunks, two for my parents and two above for us children. In a sustained raid my father would heat up drinks on a Primus stove. Near neighbours had an Andersen shelter (half buried) or a Morrison shelter made of steel serving as a table indoors. Very early the few who owned private cars were forced to prop them on bricks for the duration of war as petrol was unavailable. Horse drawn delivery vehicles were normal, but this must have been a cause of the later switch to electric milk delivery vehicles.
The most serious intrusion of the war on our lives was the rationing of food and other commodities. It was both a nuisance and a worry to eke it out. My father kept chickens and grew vegetables extensively, so we fed quite well with eggs and the occasional chicken, although I recall that my father loathed killing chickens. He was in a reserved occupation, and so was not called-up, but he volunteered for Light Rescue work, for which he had to train, crawling under buildings, using stirrup pumps, etc. I marvel, looking back, at how he worked in London in an office all day, and then would go out on fire watching and light rescue work at night. The sleep-deprivation problem must have been considerable. The consolation was probably that there was a remarkable degree of comradeship among all local people, so that it was a very sociable time.
As children I suspect we were sheltered from the anxiety of the bad news during the early days of the war. I can recall listening to the radio at times, but mostly after El Alamein, by which time the tide had turned.
I also remember the broadcasts educating the civilian populace in Digging for Victory, the propaganda about the Squanderbug, the advertisements about "Dangerous talk costs lives", and so on.
I had to travel to school by train for a while, which does not seem to have been a problem, but at age eight I had to cycle across farmland to a new school. Being now aged eight in 1943, I had to be strictly instructed about what to do if I saw an enemy plane. I was expected to dive off my bike into a ditch for cover. Presumably my parents knew of the Luftwaffe practise of machine-gunning civilians. In fact I never needed to do it, and the only time it affected me was when the Head's wife saw me setting off home at the start of a raid, forbade me to go, and put me in her shelter where she served me a splendid meal of cakes and tea.
The V1 (Doodlebug) raids seem to cause much more worry than did the Battle of Britain, and in consequence my mother and the two children were evacuated to Liverpool, for several months. It was a curious carefree time, as air-raids were no concern, and I enjoyed a freedom I had not previously known. But as familiarity with the Doodlebugs grew we returned home, and I can recall going outside to watch Doodlebugs go overhead on their way into London.
The only serious incidents affecting us were first a landmine explosion in 1940 about a mile away which damaged some tiles on our roof , then more seriously in 1944 my mother set off for the shops one afternoon leaving us children to rest in the shelter in an aunt's care. My brother was just being dressed in the shelter when there was a strange noise accompanied by clanking, which came up the road, I assumed it was a coal lorry with its tail-gate loose, but it appeared to pass overhead for some reason. Then it came back and about 30 seconds later there was a loud explosion. What we did not learn until later was that our mother on her bicycle got to the bottom of the road and realised she had forgotten her ration books and so came back to the house - fortunately - as she would have been passing the exact spot where the doodlebug (for that was what it was) crashed. As it was she had just entered the hallway and was blown by the blast into the coat alcove under the stairs. The handle of the door opposite was torn out and landed at her feet. The noise I had thought was a coal lorry was the banging of the doodlebug engine running empty as it gradually dropped/glided from the sky. It landed in a field and damaged some nearby houses, but I believe no-one was harmed, fortunately.
Later the V2 rockets caused serious concern because they couldn't be avoided. One man was scooped out of bed by the blast and was found injured but alive on the opposite side of the crater.
Then in the spring of 1944 I was sent for a holiday to stay with my uncle near Emsworth in Sussex. I was fascinated to see so many troops here, as throughout the war troops were rarely seen. My uncle was rightly alarmed, as he realised that this was not normal, and advised my father that I should come back home. Of course what was happening was the assembly of invasion forces for the Normandy landings.
The arrival of VE day was an occasion of great excitement as one was allowed to stay up late and watch the huge bonfire in the road at the junction of two streets. The next day about an inch of tarmac had been burnt off a circle about eighteen feet across. Thereafter there was a curious sense of unreality as now, aged ten, I can remember the street lights going on and life returning to some semblance of normality, yet rationing was still in force, and at the same time the "forgotten army" were still at war against Japan. Finally I can remember the appalled mixture of horror and relief over the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The horror grew as we realised the enormity of what had been unleashed for the future, as well as what had happened to all the people of these cities. But for the (by then commonplace) reports of atrocities committed by Japanese forces there would have been much greater protest at the bombings. As it was there was just relief that they had brought the horrors of war to a close.
At the end of the war the first general election culminated in speeches by Churchill and Attlee, to which my father made me listen. He then asked me which had impressed me most. I remember saying that Churchill sounded the more impressive, but I could not remember the points he made, while Attlee's speech was quietly but compellingly argued. My father replied that I should note the outcome. When Attlee duly won it was because Churchill had misjudged the medium of radio, whereas Attlee had got it right.

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