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Written on behalf of Don Shepherd by Crawley Library.

During the war I was living in New Malden with my parents and my sister.

One day I was over at my Aunt鈥檚 at Kingston upon Thames. The air raid sirens went and it sounded like it was in New Malden so I decided to go ever to find out if everything was OK. The officials wouldn鈥檛 let me through, but I knew the back roads. I got to the house and the roof was blown off. I spoke to a neighbour and was told that they had arranged to go up to my Grandfather鈥檚 place. This was my first experience of the bad side of the war.

Later on, going to school 鈥� as far as I remember it never stopped any of the school work. We had air raid shelters so when we were sent down there the headmaster would continue teaching. Unfortunately the school was never damaged!!
With the service scouts we wopuld run messages for whoever wanted them. You would wear an armband and then someone would just send you to the fire station. You never minded because you just wanted to help and get the message through.
Whilst I was a service scout, one afternoon I saw a bomb coming down and realised it had come down near a friends house. So I went over on my bike to investigate. The house was a mess but my friends were in the Anderson shelter out the back. I dragged Jan out to go and have a look through the house to see if we could tidy up. There was a dividing wall between the front and backroom. Against this used to stand a glass cabinet full of china and glassware. This had shifted forward about 2 feet, there was a whopping great hole in the wall behind it but the glass cabinet and it鈥檚 contents were all still in tact! Nothing was broken at all 鈥� it was amazing.
Whilst we were cleaning up as best we could, we played a Victor Sylvester record called 鈥淭his is a lovely way to spend an evening鈥� the second line goes鈥� 鈥淚 can鈥檛 think of anything I鈥檇 rather鈥�. That will stay with me forever.

One evening I was cycling home from Kingston and I heard the sirens going. I peddled on, hearing the fire overhead. I realised there were bits of shrapnel coming down so I peddled harder to get to the bridge ahead to take shelter. Just before I got there a piece of shrapnel got my front tyre. This was annoying as it meant I had to walk home the rest of the way and get a new front tyre.

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