Sirens, Shelters and Shrapnel.

My mother and father, Florence E and Wallace S Foote, and me, Mike Foote, their only son, moved from Ilford/Dagenham to Kilburn in NW London early in the war. My father worked for the London and North Eastern Railway at Marylebone.He was in the Home Guard and attached to an AA site at Dollis Hill. I attended the primary and junior schools in Kingsgate Road and Messina Avenue.
My earliest memories are of the war. The sound of the air raid sirens, the street shelters, and the sound of shrapnel hitting the pavement.
The shelter in Iverson Road, not far from the terraced house in which we lived,was a typical street shelter. I recall stuffy, smelly nights, the pungent smell and the glow of cigarettes, and comments from adults, who on hearing the droning aircraft might say, "It's one of ours." "Nah, it's one of theirs!"
What mainly stands out at that time, more than anything else, was the noise. Explosions, rumblings of aircraft, AA guns firing into the sky, (They rarely hit anything, but they were good for moral.)
And of course, the air raid sirens; the rising and falling wail of the alert, and the steady drone for the all clear.
Walking back from school, along Kilburn High Road, I saw a V1,or 'doodlebug'. I took shelter in a shop with large plate glass display windows!
I don't remember any explosion, or the motor cutting out though.This musthave been in 1944. Later that year we were bombed out by a V2,I was told later.
There is a playground on the site today.
I am a student of WW2, not just the campaigns, or the 'hardware', but also the social, cultural and political aspects of the British people during the period.

Mike Foote

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