The truth about "shelter" life

For over 40 years family legend told of one aspect of my father (Don)'s war, spent in Walthamstow, East London. He had nobly studied (and passed) his school exams spending evenings positioned under the kitchen table, in case of falling bombs. Only recently he confessed the truth that he preferred to spend the evening there to joining the large group of old and rather smelly women (and his mother), who gathered in the shelter each evening. (It should be remembered that a bath a week was as good as it got in those days). So there's one of my father's halos gone!

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