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Before the war, my father Hilton Joscelyne, started digging an air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden; it was an ambitious scheme and never got further than the concrete entrance steps and these were later covered over. However he had two blast barriers built of timber, corrugated iron sheeting, sand and sand bags, one shielding the hall at the front of the house and the other parallel to it at the back next to the dining room.
Between the two in the middle of the building was the understair cupboard and it was there that we sheltered when there were air raids. The window panes were pasted with strips of paper and of course we had blackout curtains. Most of the iron railing fences were taken for the war effort and we kept chickens on the adjoining unused land fronting a largely undeveloped Marshalls Road which had been laid out but only partially developed in 1938. We used the road as a race track for our scooter and tricycle.
Although I was not at home at the time, a stick of bombs was dropped on what is now Marshalls Park in the valley of the small River Brain. Though only about two hundred yards away, the soft ground, trees and the rising ground between there and the house prevented any damage to our house. Later, a V1 flying bomb ended its run a similar distance away near the Notley Road, but again this was close to the river and we fortunately only suffered some blown out window panes and slight damage to patio doors.
On my ninth birthday in February 1941, a stick of bombs fell on the Bank Street and Coggeshall Road corner in the centre of Braintree causing three fatalities and destroying Lloyds Bank on the corner and several other buildings in both roads. From the middle 1950s my father was entrusted by the various owners to reallocate the parcels of land for rebuilding, this eventually being carried out in three schemes to a common frontage design.
I never recall being short of food, memories however included a regular filling first course of the family Sunday lunch of Yorkshire Pudding - on its own with gravy as it is traditionally served in Yorkshire. Then receiving a food parcel from friends in America with a cake which was so rich that we couldn't eat it. A real treat, perhaps just after the war, was a visit to the American airbase at Birch near Colchester, where a family friend was Commanding Officer, and enjoying plenty of ice cream.

School was at Cut Hedge, Gosfield which was then a boys-only boarding and day school. The location in the country was well away from the war except for the American airfield at Gosfield only just the other side of the fields and woods surrounding the old Courtauld House. Aircraft flew over at low level and a particular memory was all the planes and gliders taking off for what I think was Operation Market Garden, the crossing of the Rhine.
Flying bombs came over from time to time and another memory on one of those occasions
was diving under the old billiard table in our form room and cracking my head. When raids took place, usually at night, we would go down into the cellars. Once, a boy received some dried bananas in a food parcel - their description is better not attempted!

Leisure Activities
Several of us boys in the London Road area formed a "gang", the principal activity of which was model aircraft making. Some were solid models, others flew. My brother Brian spent hours and hours building a balsa wood frame, paper covered, flying model (I think an "Ajax") which was powered by elastic driving a propeller. We had the use of a sports field next to our house, but on the first outing the whole structure of the plane concertinered when the elastic was overwound! Other planes were lost in the trees. We also spent a lot of time learning plane recognition.
Swimming at the "Sun Lido" was the main sporting activity - a fine nearly new open air swimming pool and small boating lake on the Rayne Road. The owner, Mr Leslie Hunnable, was an American and for the first part of the war he was regarded as an alien and was not allowed to come so near the coast; during this time my father had overall controll on his behalf. We could walk across the fields to reach the pool and we spent many happy hours there. There was also boating on the River Pant at Codham Mill, the rowing boats run by a Mr Brown at Lones Hole. The river was fuller then and we were able to cycle over.
our cousins from Brighton visited us most summers as they were not allowed on the beach there and father set out a small running track in the garden and built a long jump for us to compete against one another, including the regular gang. My cousin Philip, Brian and I wrote a play adapted from a short story using an ancient typewriter and which we performed for our parents. On one occasion we raised 6s.4d (about 30p in today's money but worth much more then) which we proudly handed in to the Town Hall for Mrs Churchill's "Aid to Russia Fund". The scene changes for the play, which included much foliage from the garden, took considerably longer than the scenes themselves, I remember! We also produced programmes for the audience.

Other Happenings
My brother and I might well have been sent to friends in the USA at the outset of the war - it was certainly considered, but no doubt the sinking of a ship with the loss of so many children who had been sent was the deciding factor.
Father had been called up just at the end of the first world war, being involved with the motor torpedo and other boats at Harwich, but at the age of 39 in 1939, he remained in Braintree to run the family Furniture and Estate Agency business while his brother Arthur was called up into the RAF. Father's wartime activity included being part of "Report Centre" team, controlling Civil Defence in the town, and principally with the Air Training Corps,(ATC).
He was instrumental with others in forming the Braintree Air Defence Cadets just before the war and became their first Commanding Officer, continuing when they then became the ATC. He was later Squadron Leader and then Wing Commander of the East Wing for all of which he was awarded an MBE. He told of many occasions when he found it very difficult to find his way to Squadrons and Flights around Essex in the blackout and fog when the headlights were only allowed to have thin slits for the beams. Father also helped build Baily Bridges at Crittalls on Sunday mornings, after which he regularly walked up the London Road to the King William Public House for a pint.
Mother, Connie, helped organise and run a canteen for servicemen in the town at the then London Road Congregational Church (now Christchurch). She also coped with two evacuees from Enfield and Edmonton in London when their school was evacuated to Braintree for a time. Also, the Commanding Officer of a wireless station in Queenborough Lane was billeted on us for quite a while.
At High Garrett, just along the Halstead Road, a Prisoner of War Camp had been established - I think for both German and Italian prisoners. At the end of the war, local people including from the Rotary Club of Braintree and Bocking, established "The Braintree Experiment" which was an attempt to educate the prisoners about the British way of life. Quite a number of the internees eventually became British citizens and I know much later on, one actually bought a house right next to the camp.
Of course, I well remember Identity Cards ( and still have mine) and Ration books. Unknown to almost everyone, many thousands of Ration Books were stored in the basement of the family furnishing business, Henry Joscelyne Ltd. in the High Street; brick walls to enclose them were built, no doubt for both security and fire precaution purposes.

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