About the contributor

Just before dinner on a beautiful Sunday morning in September, with the streets full of the rich aroma of beef, potatos, and Yorkshire Pud roasting in their tins, I was called by my Dad into the back room of our new house in Shirley, just outside Croydon.
Inside, my Mum and Dad were sitting with some neighbours round the wireless set. Solemn music was playing and then at eleven O'Clock the voice of an old man, strangely serious and remote, came from a loudspeaker. I had never heard a voice quite like it. To my childish mind it seemed that there must have been another world somewhere from which such voices came. It droned on and on, "By Eleven O'Clock this morning no such undertaking has been received and this country is therefore at war with Germany"
For a few minutes there was a long silence as the grown ups sat staring blankly into space, Then my Dad stood up, "So that's it then" he said "here we go again, ruddy Germans"
"I'll make some tea" said my Mum "you kids can go outside and play now."
We had gone no further than the front garden when the quiet Sunday air was rent by the wailing sound of sirens and we were hurriedly called back indoors.
"They're not wasting any time" my Dad observed grimly.
Nothing happened though, and a few minutes later the all clear sounded.
"Must have been testing them out I suppose, off you go and play." said my Dad.
I was nine and a half years old and had heard the air raid sirens for the first time.
I knew that something was going on, something that gave everyting a very special edge. It was like knowing that nothing was going to last, like the very last day of the holidays. It endowed everything with a special intensity and it wouldn't be long before the war took place just over our heads.
The thrill and excitement I was to experience throuought the war was just about to happen.
On another beautiful moring all the kids from our fledgling gang wre playing out in the street when one of them looked up and shouted "What's all that up there?"
We all stopped to see what looked like black flies swarming up in the clear blue sky. Tiny black shapes hovering and circling and then, one by one, peeling off and diving down to the erath below.
The air raid sirens began to wail as large plumes of black smoke billowed up in the distance.
"Them's Stukas" one of the older boys called out, "run for it" and we all ran off to our houses.
This was my first air raid. I had seen a stuka attack.
When my Dad came home from work he didn't share my excitement at the days events. Instead he seemed both serious and angry.
"Thank God you're all ok" he said "I was worried sick, Croydon airport copped it today, they smashed the whole place up , lokks like it's started for real now,.....ruddy Jerries. Dive bombers they were, some of them didn't even pull out of the dive, went straight into the ground they did, serve them bally well right."
When we had first moved into the house in Shirley I had spent days lying in the long grass watching the majestic spectacle of the multi-winged silver aircraft of imperial airways coming slowly into land at Crodon airport. Such exquistite machines, gleaming in the sunlight like silvered crane flies with names like Handley Page Hannibal and De Havilland Dragon Rapide. Now all of that had been polished off by the evil sounding Stuka.
The War would consign these beautiful aircraft to the scrap book of history.
It wasn't long before my Dad, who was too old to join the Army, signed on as a Special Policeman.