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My earliest memory of the war was about 1941 when I was four years old and staying at my Nan and Granddad’s house in Gillingham, Kent. They had a shelter in the garden that was half underground. When the air raid siren went off we would all go into the shelter. One night the bus garage, nearby was hit and we could hear the glass roof crackling under the heat. The sky was red from the flames. We stood in the garden and watched it for some time. Soon after that we moved into a house in the same road as my Nan and had to get black-out curtains up straight away. My father was in the First World War and was too old to be called up in for WW2. He was therefore in the ARP (Air Raid Warden) and walked the streets after dark. If there were any chinks of light showing at people’s windows he would knock and tell them.

In our house we had a cellar which was shored up to make it safe for us to use as a shelter. My mother would not go down there if there was an air raid. She got me in bed with her and always said “If your time is up we will know"; therefore I was not too frightened, on the other hand my father would be pleading with her to go into the cellar.

When I was at infant’s school I was told if an air raid siren went off when I was on my way to or from school I was to go to a friends house, but one day I was on my way home when the siren sounded and nobody was in at the house I was told to go too, so I laid on the ground close to the wall until the 'all clear' went. I then went to my house.

One night my cousin Tony and my Auntie Joyce were staying and we were sitting in front of the fire when a bomb came over the house and landed in the middle of the road, outside our house, Mum and Auntie Joyce pushed us to the ground and laid over us. My Dad had been in the back garden and rushed in saying, ”all out the front door”, as he opened it we saw what had happened, the wind had blown the explosion towards the house opposite us and the curtains were alight and there was phosphorus all over the walls and in our front porch. Mum and Auntie Joyce had it on their hands. My Dad said, “We had best shut the door and go down the cellar”. Shortly after that the all clear siren went and everyone rushed up from the cellar and out the back garden, not realising that I had been left behind coming up the stairs last when they shut the door. Luckily I was not locked in too long. Thinking it was all over we went to bed. In the middle of the night there was a lot of banging on our front door. It was the police saying, “get out as quick as you can there is an unexploded bomb still in the road. Most people went to a hall in the town, but we went to my Nan’s, as her house was the other end of the road.

In the morning we heard that the elderly lady opposite had been killed as she was putting her key in the door to let herself in. Next to her was a family with several children in their house which was hit, luckily they had been in the cellar. When they dug them out of the debris one of the girl’s hair had gone grey. We just counted ourselves lucky that the blast had blown that way otherwise we may not have survived that raid.

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