Submitted by Robert Price, Harrow u3a
I was nine when the war broke out, living with my parents in London. I was not evacuated, my parents decided to keep me at home. I did not go to any school for six months, a teacher used to come to our street once a week to give an hour's lesson to two or three of us. We had a brick-built shelter in the back yard which housed three families and it had bunk beds. We went into the shelter at about 6.00pm every night until around 6.00am the next morning. It was all a big adventure to us youngsters, we did not appreciate the serious situation. I had a collection of shrapnel, bullets etc from around the streets and I did find an unexploded incendiary bomb which I took home - my Father soon confiscated that! We were eventually told to report to a school, but due to the bombing, I went to about four schools in 1940. On one occasion, my friend and I took our homemade wheelbarrow to get water from a standpipe as there was none in the houses. The standpipe was near a railway line, the siren had sounded and suddenly we saw a German plane swooping down. We lay down against a wall and the 'plane dropped a bomb on the railway line. Luckily the bomb hit the railway embankment in soft earth, otherwise, we could have been injured. I got a scholarship to William Ellis Grammar School and survived the V1 and V2 Bombs, leaving school in 1946 Still here at 90, I think the rationing of food was good for us and I hope to carry on for a few more years.