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My story is in fact two short ones. Due to my father being away in the Navy during the war he does not feature in the first one. My mothers sister invited my mother and I to sleep at their home during the war years whilst we spent the daytime in our own home about 100 yards away
I am uncertain whether it was the early hours of Tuesday 30th or Wednesday 31st July 1940 but my uncle rushed into the bedroom to state that we must have slept through the siren as he could hear shrapnel falling. We rushed into the Anderson shelter and waited until it started to become light and then with no sounds to be heard we cautiously returned indoors. At 8.30am my uncle opened his shop and started work and soon after the milkman arrived. We were to learn that there had been no air raid that night but that a builders yard some 50 yards away had gone up in flames. My Uncle's shrapnel must have been the timber popping in the flames.

The next event involved fire and at a time when my Dad was home on leave. It was the night of 17/18th April 1942 during a heavy raid. We heard a crack overhead and my Aunt called out "They've got us". As if there was not already enough noise going on outside I screamed out and cried and was consoled by my Mum, bless her. An incendiary bomb had fallen on top of the shelter and, fortunately, rolled to the north onto my Uncle's prize lawn. My Uncle picked up his shovel to get some earth and in doing so dug up my Aunt's bluebells, another got the stirrup pump and my Dad smothered it with a sand bag. Had it rolled the other way it could have been an even more terrifying story as the shelter had been built very close to the large wooden shed.

Clearly I will never forget these events but we have always been so grateful that we were allowed to survive and tell the tail whilst so many others did not.

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