ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

I was seven years old when the Second World War started and I remember my dad having to go in the army and there was just my mum and two younger sisters left at home. Because we were just outside of London, in the recreation field at the end of our road they put in a search light unit and the anti air craft guns, so every night we had the search lights on and the guns firing away at the German air crafts.
They built underground shelters in our school ground so all our lessons were held in the underground shelters everyday. During playtimes we could stand and watch our spit fires trying to shoot down the German bombs.
All food was rationed so our sweet allowance was 2oz a week i.e. a half bar of small chocolate for each person.
One day a German plane crash landed just passed our house into the recreation field so all my friends jumped all over it until the police came.
As the war continued my mum, two sisters and myself were evacuated to a small village in Yorkshire. So our schooling continued in the Yorkshire village until the end of the war. While we were living in Edgeware because we were so close to London houses in our street and local area were always being hit by stray bombs at night. So in the morning we would go out and see whose house had been ht and what damage had been done. Some houses were hit by incendiary bombs while meant the house ignited rather than blew up.
As a lad I would go out collecting shrapnel from the shells that exploded and pick up the cases from the machine gun bullets from the spit fires. We were warned not to pick up anything we found on the floor i.e. pens, watched and wallets etc because they could be personal time mines that could explode and blow your hand off.
My happiest memory was when my dad came home from leave on the army because we had great fun together.
We could still go to the pictures but if there was an air raid we would all have to get up and leave.
When the war was over we all had great street parties for VE Day, there was table and chairs, balloons and stupid hats. We ate jellies, cakes and ice creams where everyone got sick!

Grace Collins

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.