My Grandad's Story

When I was doing a project on WW2 my Grandad told me this story.

Our air raid shelter was delivered ,along with everyones in our road,by the council lorry and the unloaded and left at the side of the road. My dad and I( carried the parts , which were galvanised corrugated steel sheets from the road ,through the entry to the back of the house. The shelter had to built in a hole ( half in and half out of the ground) so straight away my dad and I started to dig a big hole in which to erect the shelter. As we lived in a row of six terrace type council houses , our neighbors could see what we were doing and came to watch and laugh at my dad for wasting his time " you won't be needing that" they said but none of them helped to dig the hole. One night a little time after our shelter was in place the air raid sirens sounded and my parents woke me and my sisters, to go into the air raid shelter but when we got there we couldnt get in because all of our neighbors were in there, My dad was very angry and told them to get out so that we could get in. The very next day surprise surprise our neighbors were all busy building their own shelters. As the war progressed and air raids came most nights we children were put to bed in the shelter to save waking us up and if the air raid went on past midnight which they usually did we didn't have to go to school till 10 o'clock the next morning , which we thought was great.

Here is another short story my grandad told me.

His Dad who was a fire warden came home one morning with the air raid siren going off. He had just closed the door of the Anderson shelter they had built when they heard a huge bang at the door. My Grandad who was only 10 at the time watched his Dad open the door to find a bright red-hot piece of shrapnel. His Dad had just escaped serious injury or even death by seconds!

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