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I was still a child when the war ended, but my most abiding memory is of the continual fear of those around me, which of course in turn frightened me because I didn’t fully understand why.
I remember the horror of everyone in the street at the sight of the telegram boy, the sudden stillness, the quiet unbearable wait to see which house he stopped at. The sorrow for someone else’s loss and the relief that it wasn’t their own.
One of my earliest memories is of going home one day to find my mother lying on the sofa weeping. I was quickly taken back to my grandmother’s house, confused and upset because something was obviously wrong. I later found out my mother had just received one of those dreaded telegrams herself, with the news that my father had been killed at sea, the first operation he had been on since finishing training shortly before.
I remember the panic the sound of the sirens caused, of being woken in the middle of the night, quickly dressed in my little siren suit and rushed off to the shelter. As the doodlebugs came over everyone would freeze when it suddenly went quiet, holding on to everyone else for dear life until the explosion could be heard in the distance.
I would look at pictures of ice cream and chocolate and get people to tell me what they were like, never having tasted them myself. I thought food shortages were normal as I had never known any different.
But it was the never ending, relentless fear of everyone I knew that sticks in my memory most of all.

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