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This story was submitted to the people’s War site by Holly Fuller of Leicestershire Library Services on behalf of Neil Roberts and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.I was born in 1936, so I did not know anything different than living in wartime. It was my parents who suffered because of the war. I lived in Kingston and can remember my father taking me up to the front bedroom to watch the Germans bombing the docks, my father was in shipping so they knew what they were aiming for. I wasn’t scarred infact it was quite fascinating.

We had a Morrison shelter in our house, which was an iron cage, which you slept in, it was supposed to protect you if your house was bombed and stop you getting crushed. We were lucky our house was never bombed but I can remember three houses down our road being hit.

I can remember the V2s falling, these were silent bombs, so they just fell out of the sky with no warning. Doodle bugs or flying bombs were just as awful except they would make a loud noise as they were flying over head, when the sound stopped it meant the bomb was dropping, making you feel very anxious about where it was going to land.

I was evacuated in 1944 to Cheshire, and spent 9 months living on a farm, I even ended up picking up the local accent for a while. On the train to take us to Cheshire I sat next to my sister and enjoyed the ride, then suddenly I felt my sister push me to the floor of the carriage. Being a stubborn young boy I was not happy with this and wanted to see what was happening. As I looked up I saw a big plume of smoke coming from a housing estate we were passing, a bomb had fallen on the estate. We were very fortunate the train wasn’t hit, looking back it is quite funny really how I nearly got killed being evacuated!

During the war my father was taken very ill with peritonitis, he survived and was probably saved by the penicillin he was given, he was infact very fortunate as he was the first civilian to be given penicillin. He did look very thin after his illness, as though he had been in a concentration camp.

When my mother told me war was over, although I had never been scarred, frightened or even know any different I like everyone else was relieved.

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