Evicted by Frogs

My father was in the ARP in Raydon and used to have go out on patrol at night.

He had built us an air raid shelter and I had my garden on top — I used to grow flowers on it.

Dad said that if the siren went Mum should get all us five children inside.

But I remember one night the frogs had got in before us and Mum took one look and said, ‘Right, out! We’ll go indoors. If Hitler’s going to kill us, we’ll die in comfort!’

I don’t think we went back in after that. If we were inside the house when an air raid sounded, we always went under the table and Mum would throw Dad’s big black ARP coat over us.

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