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‘’This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Jim Farr from Horsham and has been added to the website on behalf of John Griffiths with his permission and he fully
understands the site's’ terms and conditions’’

My name is John Griffiths, I was born in 1938 and at the beginning of the War I was living with my parents and many pets at 67 Poplar Ave., Hove, Sussex in a typical 1930’s house. An area known as Hangleton on the edge of the Downs and Farmland.
My first recollections were the blackouts at home.

At home father was out most evenings on ‘’Home Guard’’ duty somewhere in Hove/Portslade and I can recall being very impressed with his uniform, gun and ammunition. Meanwhile, whenever danger loomed, my mother and I (and latterly my baby sister) together with the pet dog, Dutchy, 2 cats, Danny and Micky, budgies and a parrot would squeeze ourselves into the Anderson air raid shelter which seemed to take up most of the space in our dining room.

Generally I did not appreciate the seriousness and danger of the situation but think the haunting sound of the Air-Raid Siren on the roof of the Grenadier pub was perhaps more frightening than the sight and sound of German aircraft. I recollect standing in the back garden watching German planes and later doodlebugs overhead heading for London, sometimes pursued by spitfires, with local barrage balloons floating in the sky. All this coupled with the deafening sound of the nearby Anti Aircraft Gun emplacement situated in the cornfields which is now where Amberley Drive and the rest of the Council Estate is situated, seemed terribly exciting.

I later attended a kindergarten near West Blatchington Windmill which we used as a shelter during air-raid warnings.

Unfortunately our movements around the Brighton/Hove area were restricted by, for example, the whole of the beach being cordoned off by a long line of concrete blocks, masses of barbed wire and probably land mines designed to hinder the German invasion and it was not until a long time after the war ended that the beach was cleared and made safe and we were allowed to go for our first paddle. However we were only a few hundred yards from the Downs and we spent many happy hours playing there, collecting odd bits of shrapnel, spent shells and mortar bombs and strips of silver paper which was spread over a wide area at the back of the town hoping to fool the German planes into thinking it was the sea.

Other recollections:-

Gas masks, mine had a long trunk and my baby sister’s was a balloon.
Large water tank (size of a swimming pool) and ‘’wardens’’ concrete bunker near the Grenadier Pub.
German fighter plane crashed on the railway line near Olive Road bridge.
Spending a night in the shelter listening to a plane circling overhead all night (waiting for the inevitable ‘’bang’’) - it crashed landed (safely) after using it fuel, in a nearby road and it turned out to be a British bomber returning from a sortie and was apparently lost, the pilot thinking that he was still over mainland Europe. The crew survived.

And to finish, my first banana at a street party.

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