The Shelter
I was looking forward to my thirteenth birthday when the second world war began. I can remember we had been told to listen to the radio at mid-day on Sunday as the Prime Minister was going to make an important announcement. Next Sunday would be the third of September and we knew that we would be told either that Germany had accepted the ultimatum England and France had presented to withdraw troops from the Polish border or we would be at war.
The Prime Minister's speech lasted only a short time. He said that we were now at war and hostilities would start immediately. Soon we heard air attacks had been made against German shipping and air raid sirens had been heard in London.
Contrary to what I had expected our lives did not change immediately, and although the war did not end by Christmas as some people had been heard to forecast, our living routine was not very different from what it had been. The period we entered was later to be called the "phoney war" and ended sometime in the middle of 1940 as the battle stared that led to the defeat of the Allied forces in continental Europe. We had been issued with gas masks and ration books and it appeared that some food items were going to be in short supply, but we had no feeling of being in danger.
The flat part of England where we lived was ideal for farming, but as time went by priority was given to building air force bases, supplying targets for enemy aircraft to attack. Because of the increasing air activity, especially at night time, we decided to build an air raid shelter. I helped my father dig a deep trench across our garden. This took several days for us to do and as we dug we became aware of being watched by people from the neighbouring houses. Eventually some people asked what we were doing and thought we were joking when we said it would be a place of safety if air raids became worse
We lined the inside of the trench with railway sleepers, but before we had finished this part of the job air raids were taking place more frequently and bombs had been aimed at a bridge across the railway line close to us. Our neighbours asked if we would like them to help and we soon finished making a comfortable underground shelter.
When the sirens sounded at night we all left our beds and rushed to the shelter as fast as we could In this way we spent hours during many war time nights getting to know each other, sometimes playing cards or darts or sleeping during longer periods of air raid alerts.
With the end of the war conditions returned to normal. I can't remember the shelter being dismantled and the trench being filled in, but at some time this must have happened as the place where it was became garden again.
Friendship with next door neighbours continued, though not as close as in those shelter nights.