Shirley Chowne's childhood memories of World War II

I was born almost five months after the war began when my Dad was called up for war service. He went into the Royal Air Force and they were known as the Brylcreem Boys, apparently because of their hairstyle. I saw a lot of my uncles and aunts and grandparents as my grandparents had a cafe nearby and my mum and aunt worked in the cafe.

We didn't have an Anderson shelter in the garden, we had a Morrison shelter indoors, and one evening while eating my supper my mum said to me 'quickly, get under the table'; obviously a warning of an air raid had sounded.

Another time I must have heard a loud bang as I was told not to worry, it is just the clouds bumping into each other.

One day my mother and I were going into my granddad's cafe and she turned to me and said, "When we get inside I want you to go up to that man and give him a big hug and a kiss and say hello, because that man is your daddy. He has come home." I would not go up to him but stood behind my mother while this man took bars of chocolate out of his kit-bag and gave them to me. I gladly took them, I might add.

This was at the end of the war and I did not like this strange man who was there all the time having my mums attention. One day I climbed on his lap and looked up at him and said, "Do you think you will be going back to Egypt in a parachute?" With that, my hand went up to his face, just missed his eye, and drew five lines of blood down his cheek. This must have hurt my father inwardly so much, but to me, this man was an intruder and I did not like him there with me and my mother. It took a long time after that for me to accept this man as my father.