Cass Lewart remembers the nerve racking time he and his parents experienced at the start of WWII in Poland.

September 1, 1939, the first day of the war started with sirens announcing the German planes. We spent the first hours in a cellar. A few bombs fell at a distance and rumors started circulating about a poisonous gas attack. Though we had no gas masks we had gauze pads soaked in salicylic acid. Breathing through them was supposed to protect us from poisonous gases. Fortunately the rumors proved to be false. We left our shelter scared but relieved. What we did not realize was that the Luftwaffe on this day destroyed the majority of Polish aircraft on the ground.

The next few days were filled with rumors and contradicting news stories. My father learned that Lodz would be temporarily abandoned to the Germans and we decided to flee to Warsaw.

What should have been a two and a half hour train trip took us nearly two days. We left Lodz in the middle of the night on a crowded train, probably the last one leaving the city. After a few hours we rolled into a station and were told to change trains. I was so sleepy that after getting off the train I just curled up in the middle of the concrete platform and went back to sleep. After some wait we ended up on a freight train with about 50 people sitting on the floor of each box car.

The train started its slow progress towards Warsaw. As the morning came the German planes attacked. We heard the howling of diving Stuka bombers and the train stopped suddenly. Bombs and machine gun bullets started coming towards us. I was lying on the floor with my parents on top of me to protect me from bullets.

The planes made several passes, destroyed the locomotive and shot our freight car full of bullets. There was a row of bullet holes above our heads. I don't know how many people on the train were hurt. When the planes temporarily left we ran into the nearby forest.

I only remember the peace and beauty of the Polish countryside in the fall contrasting with the horrors of a few minutes earlier. We walked a few miles till we came to a small town. We stayed for a few hours in a farmer's house, experiencing another air attack. During the attack we were lying on the floor on a hot summer day covered with big down comforters to protect us from bomb fragments. I doubt that the comforters would have helped us much, they just made us sweat.

In the evening we went in a horse-drawn carriage to a suburban train station to go to Warsaw. The carriage stopped a few times when we heard German planes approaching, but they left us alone this time".

Jo Darke from the UK remembers her early childhood, overshadowed by the Second World War.

"There is a curling, browning snapshot of my younger sister and I, and our cousins from London, in fancy dress: the eldest, and the only boy, as a swashbuckling, cork-moustach’d pirate, the golden-haired toddlers as milkmaids and me, aged five, as a jodpurred land girl. In the unquestioning world of a child, land girls - and cousins from London who came to live on our farm with their nurse-maid - were a natural part of life and needed no explanation.

Nine months old when war broke out, I also accepted as commonplace my sinister Mickey-Mouse gas mask, which hung in the cupboard under the stairs: and in the flickering light of oil-lamps after dark, my childish terrors were not of hob-goblins or wicked fairies, but of things called Germans. What they were or looked like I did not know, but I feared their coming - perhaps under the window, when the wind moaned round the chimney; or through the air-vent after darkness fell on our small room.

Cut off from the world through petrol rationing and, in those days, slower communications, our family occupied a world of beauty and menace: a plane came over on the day our cousins arrived and Rosemary, eighteen months old, flung herself face-down on the ground. My father joined the pitchfork army - Dad’s Army - and appeared in uniform, for regular practice manoeuvres. He knew by heart the sounds of friendly spitfires; the enemy craft 'a Heinkel' that might drop bombs. He and the rest of the parish mourned the razing of Churchtown - Grey Cottage, the Spry Arms - to make way for an airfield, one of three that were built within three miles of our North Cornish farm. There were mysterious roads, and routes, that were closed to us throughout my six-years war, and for years after: even at the age of ten, they had become a fact of life that I had learned not to enquire about.

My first school at the age of three and a half - part of the war effort was to provide pre-school education - was conducted in a Nissen Hut overlooking the neighbouring bay. Miles of rolled barbed-wire formed physical boundaries along cliff edges hedged with stone and thrift and tamarisk. Behind the dunes, in a pretty meadow, my father’s dog Gip blew out all the windows in the vicinity through straying in there and treading on a land mine. In the drawing class, in Secondary school, the air was rent with screaming engines and gunfire: the natural accompaniment to small boys earnestly crayoning images of planes trailing big, sausagy smoke plumes dropping from the dog-fighting sky. I wonder whether any family kept these works of art. Outside the playground, Prisoners of War dug out the verges: I long to rediscover the finely-wrought silvery bracelet, bearing my name in a garland, that I got in exchange for twenty Players. In the absence of cigarettes, the bracelet’s maker would have accepted half-a-crown. Who, why, were Prisoners of War? I did not think to ask.

Not really knowing that there was a war on, I was uncertain of the word Victory: but the immensity of the Victory bonfire in Mr Ellery’s field, where we normally attended sports days to the strains of the Wadebridge Silver Band, was something to behold; and the warm Cornish voices harmonising God Save the King, in the light of the dying fire, brings joy to these gaunt images of childhood.

It was the most potent and horrible image of all that ended my innocence. When I was eight, and my mother expecting another child, my sister and I were taken by a family friend to visit our London cousins. The largest town I knew was Newquay, then a fishing town overspilling with family hotels and guest-houses newly-built between the wars. We were to break the journey by staying in Plymouth. I remember the sooty smell of the steam train; the gasping and rumbling of the engine, and the upright, enclosed carriage - and then, as evening fell, my first sight of a city.

Even at that age, perhaps blunted by being told ‘not to ask’, I could make no sense of what I saw. There were no buildings: only - looming against the fading sky - blackened, jagged shapes with remnants of domestic interiors - bits of wallpaper, a fireplace and empty mantlepiece; a sagging floor - and holes where windows once were; and gaping voids where once were doors. Some walls, the brickwork exposed, did have doors, still closed.

I did not ask, but wondered - and felt afraid. The green and blue and yellow world of the oil-lit farm and the bay, albeit stained with gas- masks and barbed-wire, was the only world I knew. Only after I came to adulthood, and learned the meaning of the word 'Blitz', did these nightmare surroundings - unexpected and unexplained - give me my final knowledge of war".

Alfred Bowley from the UK sent us his painful memory of the Second World War, titled 'Saint Benedict's Revenge'.

"February, 1944, Italy. 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards' Tac/HQ are in sangars on mountains 2000 ft above the Garigliano River. Dawn brings a break from this driving rain we have endured for the past week. The sky is clear for once and across the valley to the east waves of American bombers - Mitchell Mediums I think, circle above an angular white building set solidly atop one of the mountains. For once, our worthy allies do not impartially share their bombs between friend and foe alike. Indeed, they could hardly miss this target with its dense plume of smoke and dust rising hundreds of feet into the air. Fred Cooper the Intelligence Sergeant, knows all about it. It's a monastery, packed with Germans. It covers the main road and railways north to Rome. No chance of our troops breaking through until that place is taken. The town below the mountain is called Cassino.

The bombers drop their loads, circle and passing through some half-hearted A/A fire, set off home over our heads. One or two find the odd bomb not properly released. They waggle their wings to jettison the unwanted burden thoughtlessly into our midst. Fortunately we have no casualties. After the bombing we look with envy at the distant ruins, What wouldn't we give to be in those cosy cellars, some thirty feet of compacted rubble overhead, perhaps a stove, dry clothes, even a fry-up!

Three months later, after further slaughter mainly of Poles recruited from Russian concentration camps the strong-point is breached. The Fifth Army passes with scarcely a glance at the ruin high above. Knowledgeable as ever, the Intelligence Section says there were no Germans in the monastery after all, though they were dug-in on the slopes and Cassino itself was strongly defended. It seems this monastery, founded by a Saint Benedict, was quite well-known and there is a lot of fuss in the newspapers at home about its destruction. After the ruins of French and Belgian towns on our way to Dunkirk, the blitz on British cities and our advance through more devastation in North Africa and Italy, why is this heap so important? We have our own immediate problems.....

November, 1998, Italy. Cassino.It is still raining. A thousand Poles in neat rows lie on the hillside behind the monastery. In the valley four thousand British dead, collected from their scattered graves, now lie side-by-side, in rows, rank upon rank. The turf above their faces is soggy to the touch as I bend to read the inscriptions. In my mind's eye I can see those named as, they were those 54 years ago. Early twenties, fit, lean, full of bawdy humour, guts and hope for the future. They have not grown old ...... For many of them I had gathered their meagre persona.kit into sandbags, added my Burial Forms, all to be sent off to Sam Weaver at the Base.

A split in the curtain of rain reveals the monastery high on the mountain. Destroyed, captured, and restored, each at colossal expense, it looks down at the graves. Choking with emotion, I approach the cemetery's Cross of Remembrance. It is a mass of broken stone. Even the base, great blocks of marble, split and pushed apart. The guide explains. A shaft of lightning struck the bronze sword on the face of the cross two weeks ago".

Armin Dieter Lehmann from the USA sent us his memory of his time as a member of Hitler's youth.

On New Year's day 1945, I had arrived from Breslau (now Wroziaw) at the Kreuzeck WE-Lager (pre-military training camp) in the high alps, above Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Three weeks later, the closing battle of the war in Europe began, with a massive offensive by the Soviet armies, over 6 million strong.

Before the training had ended, I returned home. My mother, brothers and sisters had been 'evacuated' already and I had to join the Volkssturm ('peoples outburst', which was the name of the home defence force). Our 'Kampfgruppel (fighting group) was declared to be an elite unit, because over 60 of its 150 (or so) members were students of the Adolf Hitler School in Wartha. Thrown into battle southeast of Breslau on Jan. 30th, we recaptured Wansen. Although wounded, I was able to rescue other wounded comrades.

For this, I was awarded the iron Cross Second Class. Not yet completely healed, I re-joined the greatly decimated Kampfgruppe, by now brought back to full strength with Silesian boys, some only 15 years old. We expected to be f lown into the fortress of Breslau and I had arrived just in time. However, a last-minute change of orders put us on a train to take us to a newly declared fortress: Frankfurt/Oder. Expected to follow the example of Breslau and to hold out to the end, victory or annihilation, we were destined to exemplify the fighting spirit of the youngest of the young, Hitler's youth!

We never reached the HJ-fortress regiment in Frankfurt, - were positioned south of the Seelow Heights, - three days prior to Adolf Hitler's 56th birthday.

Our commander, Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant) Karl Gutschke, had been informed to expect a visit from Propaganda Minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels. He never came. Instead, Reich Youth Leader Artur Axmann arrived and he selected three of us who, at the age of 16, had been decorated with the Iron Cross. As members of the Hitler Youth delegation, we were presented to the Fuehrer on his birthday, April 20th, together with two Waffen-SS delegations.

To me Hitler looked like he was 70 years old and a human wreck. After shaking everyone's hand, he made a short speech. He compared a miracle weapon with a mediaction needed to save a patient from dying. All we had to do is keep an fighting until the medication could be applied. This I believed. Until then, my mind had been conditioned to see the Fuehrer as Germany's saviour.

After the reception Reich Youth Leader Artur Axmann kept me in Berlin and made me a member of his staf f He moved his command post into the cellar of the Party Chancellery, across from Hitler's bunker. Also situated in this air raid shelter, was a Funkstelle (radio) room few knew about, dispatching messages using the navy or the party code. No subterranean connection existed between Axmann's command post and Hitler's headquarters. Staffed with navy personnel (all of Bormann's staff had disappeared) their contingent of couries was soon depleted, all fallen or wounded when crossing Wilhelmstrasse, at that time under constant bombardment by Soviet artillery.

Reich Youth Leader Axmann then assigned some of his staff to deliver and pick up dispatches from and to the Fuehrerbunker. In the end, according to Axmann, Hitler even mistrusted the Waffen-SS and his last orders, as well as Martin Bormann's (his secretary who acted a chief-of-staff) were dispatched from the Marinefunkstelle and Parteifunkstelle (navy and party transmittal and reception unit, the latter known as Bormann's radio room).

All dispatch envelopes were sealed. The ones from Hitler were rubber stamped, signifying their importance, e.g. NUR DURCH OFFIZIER (By Officer Only) which was ironic, since I didn't have a rank at all and was too young to be a regular soldier.

In my estimation, in Berlin alone, over 5,000 Hitler Youth under the age of 18 years were sacrificed for Hitler to gain time. This was made possible by Reich Youth Leader Artur Axmann's determination to prove to the Fuehrer that he (Axmann) and the Hitler Youth would remain loyal to the end.

Not Goering, not Himmler, not even Speer, had remained in the bunker, only Dr. Goebbels (he and his wife murdered their children before committing suicide), Bormann and Axmann remained at Hitler's side.

Because of my nazi-upbringing, I had believed in Hitler until he committed suicide. Only then did I come to realize that the so-called 'first soldier' of our nation had sacrificed the majority of his troops long after he must have had comprehended that the war was lost. My belief structure started crumbling then because I realized that ten days earlier he had lied to us. There was no 'medication' in the making that could have saved the 'dying patient'. Germany had no miracle weapon!

In my estimation over 30,000 boys (and girls), born in 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1930, who served in home defence units (Volkssturm), including air defence personnel (Luftwaffe), lost their lives during the last six months of the war. I have yet to find an historical report that accounts for these casualties. An official of the Volksbund Deutscher Kriegsgraeberfuersorge (association for the maintenance of gravesites of war casualties) at the Waldfriedhof of Halbe pointed out to my wife and me that at this forest cemetry alone are buried over 2,500 boys and girls who were under the age of 18 when killed by the last Soviet onslaught that resulted in the ca pture of Berlin.

From the last HQ's there, it was I, at the age of 16, who delivered for dispatch to the radio room, Hitler's and Axmann's last orders: NOT TO SURRENDER! For me, having survived, turned into a life-long burden.

P.S. Those of you who read this and served in Hitler Youth Volkssturm or in Heimatflak units and remember battles fought and numbers of casualties suffered, please help me with compiling important statistics. The least we owe to those who lost their lives is the truth to emerge how exstensive the sacrificial slaughter was. Most of us, I am sure, endorse the value of loyalty, but even more the sanctity of life. Therefore, loyalty must have its ethics, too! Please contact: Armin Lehmann, Waldport, OR 97394-1212 - U.S.A.

Mrs Edith Loewenstein from England has written a book called SURVIVAL about her experiences in Austria at the outbreak of the Second World War. Here is an excerpt from her book:

"Chamberlain is coming to see Hitler" announced the big headlines which I had spotted when buying our milk and rolls in the comer shop. I entered our flat - "Have you heard? Chamberlain is in Germany. What will the outcome be?" "We'll see. Now come and have your breakfast" my mother answered, and walked out into the communal kitchen. My brother was standing at the wash basin in front of the window, just starting to rinse his teeth into a bucket lodged on the floor between my bed-end and the basin, and which served for the temporary disposal of the dirty washing water and general mouth rinses. Suddenly, without any warning, a scream by what sounded like 1,000 sirens howling struck our ears and chilled our spines. My badly-tested nerves gave up. A gas attack! I wanted to lift my arm to close the window, but was so paralysed with fear that I could not move it above my head. Then I saw the washing basin. The carefully-studied instructions came back to me: "Submerge your head in water". In front of me I saw the washing basin, but it was empty. Then I spotted the bucket.. Gathering all my strength and without a moment's hesitation, I got hold of' my brother and with the force of despair, submerged his head in this fine collection of life-saving liquid. A gurgle, a splatter, and then I fainted. When I came round, I found myself sitting on a chair surrounded by all the family. Aunty Ella, Susi's mother, as always the practical one, was pressing a cold wet hanky onto my forehead, Aunty Grete was murmuring "Du lieber Gott, du lieber Gott, what will became of us all?" My mother was rigid and incapacitated as she always was in a sudden emergency, and my grandmother was trying to make me drink from a cup of coffee - normally a forbidden drink for children.

Mrs Betty Dawson has written to us from Southampton about her escape from Singapore as a young girl in January 1942

My big sister, Diane and I were beginning to get used to the weird and wonderful night noises of the Far East: birds, beasts, and insects clicked, whirred, bumbled and grunted right outside our mosquito nets it seemed.

But this new noise was different, and terrifying. Out of the night sky came a rumbling that grew ever louder and a flight of aeroplanes came nearer and then right over our roof. Screaming, we ran into our parent's room. Daddy was out of bed already. He hurried down to use the telephone in the hall, but it didn't seem to be working. He came back and told us to go and get dressed quickly, not bothering to even wash or clean our teeth. 'And pack a few things'. Mummy was dressed in the things she had taken off last night, and she went through the kitchen and laundry to the servants' quarters, to speak to Ah Ling, the cook, Amah and Ali, our friends the handyman and gardener. She gave them money and they ran off into the back garden that led to the jungle. I saw Daddy take out his service revolver and go to the kennels. To my horror I realised he was going to shoot dead our pet dog Buster. We both began to cry, but there was no time for that. I put my clean pyjamas, favourite story book into my school satchel, then added Teddy and Bonzo, the knitted toy monkey. They wouldn't both fit in, so I took Teddy out again, and laid him down on my bolster. Diane took her music case, ready to take to her twice-weekly piano lesson with Miss Cox, and unturned the sheets of music onto the bedside table. Into it she put instead her prettiest frilly blouse, undies and watch and pearl necklace. Then she took the Tangee Natural Lipstick, Evening in Paris perfume bottle and a clean green comb and two hankies.

We hurried out and got into the car. Daddy drove away from our house without a backward glance. We drove through the rubber plantation as it began to get light. It was funny to see it empty of Chinese coolies and Tamil Tappers. Over the Causeway and into Singapore city, down into the docklands part. Other cars and families appeared now, going our way.

We got out of the car and Daddy then gave us all brief hugs and kisses, and a push towards the gangway leaning up the side of a huge, dark ship called The Empress of Japan. Halfway up I turned round and saw that he wasn't with us. 'Mummy, Daddy isn't coming. Look'. As we watched, he did the funniest thing. He gave the car a big push, and it tumbled over the side of the pier and fell with an enormous splash down into the China Sea.

Morris Honick, former chief of the Historical Section, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE), the Major North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Command in Europe, was the longest-serving member of the SHAPE Command Group at that Headquarters, having served on the Allied International Staff for more than 34 years. He has recorded this memory for us:

In early 1943 - in fact, 56 years ago - two convoys of merchant ships, which had set sail from New York 9 days earlier, and which were destined for Great Britain, became locked in a major battle - the kind and scale of which had never occurred before, and, most probably, would never occur again.

Among a continuing series of similar convoys, their official designations were, 'SC-122' and 'HX-229"'. Escorted by a pitifully small number of naval vessels, and headed across the Atlantic Ocean directly into paths prowled by 'wolf packs' of hundreds of German submarines, the merchant ships became - literally - painfully slow-moving targets of an enemy bent on destroying as many of them as possible. The enemy's purpose was to abort the entire Allied war effort in Europe by bringing Britain to its knees, and thereby thwarting any attempt at an invasion of the continent of Europe.

Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister would later acknowledge that his greatest single worry in the entire war was the submarine menace, and the horrific losses suffered by the convoys that attempted to reach battle-weary Britain with urgently needed aid.

While many well-known historians and writers have described the horrors of this phase of the war -among them, Clay Blair and Martin Middlebrook et al - none are known to have actually participated aboard the merchant ships themselves, where an unusual situation existed.

Carrying a small armed guard of generally inexperienced naval crews, as a complement to the mostly civilian merchant marine personnel who manned the vessels, small groups of US Army and US Army Air Forces "passengers" were also put aboard to facilitate the movement of military personnel to new stations in Britain by using every available space. Thus, the small merchant vessels - hardly of the well-known, larger troopship types that often travelled at higher speeds -- were obliged to move only as fast as the slowest ship in the convoy; e.g, generally, at about 8-9 knots, "sitting ducks' to the German submarines that trailed the convoy almost as soon as it departed New York Harbor. It would eventually take 17 days for survivors of the convoys to reach Liverpool, England.

Historical research over a half-century reveals that convoys, SC-122 and HX-229, in a raging storm in mid-Atlantic - were thrown violently together in self-defence, and by waves as high as 50 feet - became the worst hit during the entire Battle of the Atlantic -- with a loss of 22 of a total of 62 ships. (A precise accounting of the total that sailed is underway.)

Among those who participated, directly in the battle for survival were those US Army Air Forces "hitch-hiking passengers" consisting mostly of young men who only recently had completed so-called, basic training at camps in the U.S. and who (largely communications technicians and administrative personnel) had never before been aboard an oceangoing vessel, much less fired a rifle more than a dozen times.

I was among the latter. My "battle station" -- when I wasn't obliged to hustle life-sustaining cocoa up three steep ladders and onto the gun platforms during the worst three days of the fiery action - was (with another young colleague) down in a metal chamber stacked with ammunition and explosives. There we were assigned to passing 20mm and 50 cal. supplies up pulleys and ropes rigged through an overhead hatch, the only exit, to the gun platforms high above.

When a temporarily sufficient supply had been passed up, as the battle raged, an NCO on the deck above was directed to close the hatch above our heads, leaving us not only in total darkness, but also sealed in the metal chamber that measured about 15 square feet! What he replied,, when we raised a terrified objection to being entombed, even as the battle grew worse on the surface, and what additional events affected our survival (which I believe no one has yet described), must be left for further elaboration.

Andrew Johnson was born nine years after the Second World War in Canada. Now living in the UK he emailed us his "post script memories".

"Indeed my very existence is as a post script to the war. My father met my mother when his (British) Eighth Army unit occupied her home town at the end of the war. She worked for the municipality, and all spending had to be approved by a British officer, usually my father in this case. My father risked court-martial fraternizing with the "enemy".

Born into the post-war economic boom in Canada, there was little direct evidence of the war, although the wail of air raid sirens which were still tested on a regular basis (probably due to the Korean War), sent shivers down my spine even though I knew nothing of what it was like to live through an air raid, and certainly knew nothing of the coming nuclear holocaust fears.

At the age of eight I moved to England with my family, and there I was exposed to a few more signs of the war. Even in the early 1960s there were still empty lots in parts of London where buildings had been bombed out. But still I didn't really have a sense of what war was all about. One day we made a school trip to the Imperial War Museum, and on my return home was happy to show off my purchases at the museum gift shop: several pictures of various famous battles from the war. Upon showing a picture of the D-day landings to my father, he became quite upset. He had been there, and had no good memories of the event. This taught a ten-tear-old a fairly quick lesson that real people fight in wars, not the paper heroes of so many old war movies.

Although my father rarely spoke about the war, one poignant event happened about ten years ago when my father told of an incident in Normandy where they were burying some young, unidentified German casualties, and his only thoughts at the time were of the mothers at home in Germany who would probably never know what had happened to their sons. He was in tears as he told this story.

So little did my father speak about his war years, that it wasn't until after his death that I found out from an old family friend that he was in military intelligence (presumably because he was fluent in German).

What scares me, is how little current younger generations know about this war that shaped so much of the history of the second half of this century. On a recent Tonight Show, Jay Leno showed pictures of various famous people from this century to young people on the streets of Los Angeles. One of these pictures was of Sir Winston Churchill, and not one of the half dozen or so people interviewed had a clue as to his identity. The guessed suggestions were sadly laughable.

I'll close with an anecdote that I heard just last night, about the famous Karsh photograph of Churchill. That scowl on his face was apparently due to the fact that Mr. Karsh had "confiscated" his ever present cigar".

John Flynn from Greece recounts his memories from childhood of life in the American mid west during the Second World War.

"In September 1942 when America was ten months into World War II, my father changed jobs and went to work for General Mills in Minneapolis Minnesota, USA. General Mills manufactured cereals, flour, breakfast foods and cakes. Our furniture was shipped and my parents, my sister who was four years older than I, and myself drove in our 1936 Chevy, up to the new city. Only in the newspapers, on the radio or in the movies was there a war.

After two years my father was transferred to Belmond, Iowa, a very small town of 1900 people in the Northern part of the state. Iowa is called the 'Corn State', and one could see miles and miles of corn fields.

My father's new position was to assist in renovating a derelict sugar-beet factory which had closed in the 1930's depression. The new plant was to be a modern soybean factory. Again our furniture was shipped, and we drove down to Belmond, Iowa. We took a large, drafty farm house a mile outside of town and directly across the highway from the mill. To the back of our house there were someone's cows and in another pasture, horses that my dog barked at. I was ten and there was no war.

There was rationing, of course. It was a headache for my mother who had to fight with the butcher, but I knew none of that. If we hadn't had rationing, how would we have known there was a war on, and it was real?

All the farmers around had plenty of pork and beef from their own pigs and cattle. Chickens were easy to get. Towards the end of the war cigarettes became scarce. The cigarettes were all being sent overseas to hook the young service men on smoking. I can remember my sister and myself taking turns rolling cigarettes for my mother and father on a quaint little red machine. It was like a game.

But to get back to the soybean plant. A soybean factory needs silos to store the grain. They had to be built of concrete, going up several stories and the silos had to be built fast. The men would have to work long hours ... what we would call 'overtime', but there were no young men. They were all fighting the war in Europe and the Pacific.

So they brought in a hundred and fifty or so German prisoners of war. They were housed and fed on the grounds of the plant, but I don't remember how they were dressed, in grey, I think. Everything was wide open, one could come and go easily.

To guard all these hundred and fifty or so German prisoners of war, one soldier in his twenties with a rifle was posted. He stood on the side of the highway at the entrance as you drove in.

Northern Iowa was settled by Germans, some coming over after World 'War I. Each evening and especially on Sunday afternoons, cars would pull up and the American German farmers with food packages and cigarettes, speaking German, would get out of their cars and walk over to the fence and visit with the prisoners of war. The American soldier was ignored.

My mother and father would walk over and talk to the soldier, taking him a thermos of coffee and some doughnuts that my mother had baked. She would laugh and say, 'I feel sort for the soldier all alone and by himself.'

Only when I was older, did I wonder what must those German prisoners of war have thought, knowing that their homeland, Germany, by 1944 was being devastated by Allied bombing. What did they feel when they looked out across the Iowa corn fields:and saw no war".

Mr D Castagna a child at the time describes a supermarket pre World War Two in London

The shop was cool, with tiled walls, thick white slab marble counters, and a glass protection screens in front, a low shelf running the full lengths of the counters to rest one's shopping basket on, the scales in the centre of each department, so weights could be seen easily, the men assistants wore black melton jackets, pin stripped trousers, a large white apron which buttoned close to the neck, long white cuffs from wrists to elbow, which remained just as white at the end of the day, unlike the butchers who were always splattered with blood, on the bacon counter, the flitches hung on the back wall ready for cutting, there was many different types of cuts, the bacon slicing machine with its big bright red heavy wheel handle required a deft skill to turn and slice a nice rasher of bacon, the smoky aroma was very strong, smoked , green, cured, front, middle, back, streaky, long, and gammon just as madam required, at the cheese counter the large barrel shaped cheddar cheeses were cut to size with a cutting wire, white, cream, yellow and red, the exotic cheeses like edam, gouda, and stilton were kept separate, the butter counter was the artists workshop they came in 56 lb. blocks, from the different, regions of England, the colonies, Denmark and Ireland. They were selected, cut and weighed and blended to madam's fussy taste, with two wooden knives, patted this way and that by their expert hands until just right, the biscuits came in tin boxes, about a foot cubed, the lids were removed, and replaced with shiny brass framed hinged glass flaps, displaying the contents, the broken biscuits were thrown in a separate tin and sold of at a penny a pound, little children giving the sweet young lady assistant a nice smile would ensure a few jammy and creamy ones were included.

Alas one day we heard the musical sound of the siren, we laughed and thought it was marvelous, but little did we know our whole world would be changed, Dad bought bought a few sheets of plywood and made shutters for the large front room windows, he then bought down their double bed and set it up in the lounge, mattress on the floor, setting his planks on the bedheads. He kissed us all good-bye and disappeared for a long time, we then had to register, get our identity card and remember the number BKEJ i67/3 and ration books too. We had a A.R.P. warden (air raid patrol) warden visit our house, he fitted our gas-mask which we had to carry around everywhere we went, he made sure that we had proper blackout curtains, that let no light out.

Paper tape was glued over the glass, and a net type of curtain was glued on the large windows. To stop the glass from splintering through bomb blast. He made us clear out all the rubbish from under the stairs, which was considered the safest place to shelter under, despite the electric and gas meters being there, he made sure the gas valve would close easily. We found our old black kettle, he tested the cock-stop so that water could be closed off. At school we had to sit down in dimly-lit shelters, practice wearing our gas masks, whilst reciting our times tables, we still had our daily bottle of milk to drink, the cardboard top we used for making pompoms. We were now being taught to knit so that we could make socks for the forces, but that was the end of my formal education, our school got bombed. We now had more important priorities, the siren now became a lament for the dead and suffering of the blitz the back garden lawn was now dug up and planted with vegetables, we now DUG FOR VICTORY. Grew potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, cabbages and carrots. We also had an allotment in the local park to grow even more vegetables, we now scavenged the bomb sites for firewood,we were given bundles of lathes tied up with electric wire we gleaned the coal that vanished from the full bunkers. For Mum, it was now a quick dash to get to the shops in between the raids, as no one was allowed on the streets patrolled by the wardens.

Morgan Reynolds wrote to us about his childhood memories of living through the blitz of London in 1942/1943

"When you're 12 years old great moments of war are a mere trifle compared with what's happening in the family, at school and the locality. Life in war still went on and everyone made a huge effort to at least try to give a semblance of normality to we youngsters inspite of rationing and having to exist on 2 ozs of butter per week, we all had our own separate butter dish, and so it was when I returned from being evacuated to Newton Abbott in Devon to my new home in East Sheen London.

It was typical that I had been sent to Devon at the end of the 'blitz' in London in 1940 and returned in time for another blitz in 1942. Within only few days we were all squeezed into the small space under the stairs which was the safest place in the house as the bombs fell around and I can remember after one really close explosion the front door sailed past on the way to the back room. My mother cried out "mein Gott im Himmel!' my older sister said "What was that? That was German!", in an endeavour to tighten to atmosphere my mother said "Yes, I always speak in my native tongue in an emergency!" my sister was convinced for months that my mother was a spy!

The following year 1943 the tide was turning and it seemed that after all we wouldn't end up as slaves under the Nazi Boot; but horror of horrors, the V.I. attacks started, we called them 'doodlebugs' and they were vicious winged aerial bombs driven by a single ram jet engine designed to kill anyone anywhere, a bit like an 'unguided' cruise missile crashing when the fuel ran out.

At the time I was delivering newspapers each morning for Barmforths the shop in Sheen Lane. I had the posh part of Sheen, Fife Road, on my patch and on two occasions I had to abandon my precious bike and throw myself on the ground by the wall of Richmond Park for protection as the engine of the approaching bomb lurched to a halt, you knew instinctively that you only had about 20 secs before the explosion as the bomb crashed; it was that 'verrump' as the engine stopped that was crucial.

Things were,getting pretty bad at the Grammar School lessons in the shelters, and we were even being taught cricket by a Frenchman reading the rules, sorry laws, from a book! Well we soon got the hang of it that summer and each afternoon when school finished we met on Sheen Common for the great game.

One afternoon my team was fielding when we heard the approaching 'doodlebug', closer and closer - no problem if the engine keeps going, that guttural stuttering roar but at the most dangerous distance 'verrump' the engine stopped, everybody threw themselves on the ground but we were very exposed on the big cricket pitch, we could do nothing. I was lying facing the direction of the bomb and I just had to look up to see what fate had in store and I couldn't believe my eyes as the now silent V.I. did a huge and complete loop and disappeared over the trees to explode in Richmond Park.

The relief, the joy of being alive, the cheers and as we resumed the game and on the first shout of "howzatt!" both sides burst out laughing and the reason was that we I knew somehow everything would be O.K. and we would survive to play many more games".

Walter Kou Agbenyega has written to My Century about how the Second World War affected life in the small villages and towns of Ghana.

"At age 68 this February, my growing up years in the small town of Abor in the Volta Region of Ghana in West Africa, were definitely shaped, influenced and coloured for life by the scars of the Second World War as it affected even our little remote corner of the globe.

Many were our fathers, uncles and senior brothers who were carted away in truck loads to fight in a war we hardly understood except that it was between our former colonial masters, the Germans, and the new English masters and their respective allies.

The only radio receiver in the town kept us abreast with official British war news through the then very popular BBC 12 and 6 O'clock news bulletins. However, the situation created in France by German occupation and Vichy government collaboration ensured a vibrant, and ofttimes pro-German rumour machinery in neighbouring French Togoland where our kith and kin lived the day under a confused and uncertain political and military climate.

Compared to the global village scenario of today when television brings the action live as and where it is happening, news about our people throughout the war was so scant that they might as well have been fighting on another planet.

They were also years of very acute scarcity and deprivation that did not spare even the kitchen. Our mothers who had become the bread winners in the absence of the menfolk, had to scrape daily living from entirely off the land.

Once in a while, army vehicles drove by to track down what they called deserters with the help of local constabulary police. Or, on other occasions, to conscript more hands for the war effort. But, just as it started one Friday in September 1939 in Europe, the war came to a final end in September 1945 with the formal surrender of Japan. However, if the conscription for war was a painful parting of families, the demobilisation after the war turned out to be a harrowing and unpleasant reunion of families.

Of the thousands of whole human beings that were shipped out, only some hundreds were shipped back in tact; body, mind and soul. Almost all the war returnees were suffering from post war traumas that no one seemed to understand except to put it down to soldier madness. Some returned without a limb or other; some were partially or totally blind. But worst of all, having returned as heroes of East Africa and Burma, instead of the due recognition of service they expected from the authorities, they were shocked beyond disbelief to be demobilised and sent walking to their villages as paupers with only a few shillings pay-off in their pockets.

Back in their villages the poor and traumatised ex-heroes had to contend with rejection and neglect from their families. In desperation, they resorted to wild living and taking the law into their own hands. The non-returnees were written off as dead and funerals were organised in their memories without as much as demanding proper accounts from the colonial,masters concerning the whereabouts of their remains.,

Nevertheless, it would be a big injustice to paint the war as a big gloomy picture. It definitely had its positive sides also. Army life with its equal share of danger, fatigue, joy and camaraderie of the battle field had brought about a rethinking in relationships and which eventually fostered agitation for independence after the war. Thus, the myths in which the blackman had hitherto held the whiteman in awe and reverence were effectively dealt the death nail in the trenches of east Africa and the jungles of Burma.

On the higher plane, the great war also gave birth to a new and healthier world body, the United Nations (UN), to replace the defunct League of nations which could not fulfill the hopes and aspirations of the post first world war period. The UN has since grown from strength to strength as the collective voice of all sovereign states".

Ley Liberson from Plymouth, England tells us about his childhood experiences of living through the Second World War.

"My name is Ley Liberson and I was born in England in 1935 and I guess my earliest memories are of the Second World War. These were not frightening or traumatic, although I had my share of bombs and disturbed nights. Tumbling into the garden shelter we had sweet tea and soggy biscuits and I slept on a bunk, always demanding the top one. Quite often I woke to find myself back in my bed, but this of course was quite normal for my generation as we knew no different. I had plenty of food although it was rather bland and nothing exotic. Like everyone we dug up the flowers and grew our own vegetables. I was not aware of minute amounts of cheese, meat, sugar, etc., and I never missed dried fruit, bananas, chocolate and sweets as I did not know any different.

On reflection it must have been very difficult for our mothers to stretch these meagre rations and give us a variety of meals. I loved scrambled eggs made with dried egg powder and I do recall my grandmothers horror when it was suggested that we have a "meatless day". Rationing gave me an opportunity to bond with my grandfather who had a small corner shop. He and I would spend very happy Sunday afternoons counting the coupons. I'm sure this enabled me to learn to add quickly and also it was good to have the attention of a male member of the family while my father was away at war. In fact our existence as the whole was very female orientated.

School continued as normal but we have to arrive each day complete with our gasmask and a packed lunch in case an air raid warning prevented our return home. In these dim, gloomy shelters we sat on hard benches and chanted our tables, did mental arithmetic and had spelling competitions. From time to time someone would have a father appear on leave.

I can recall very clearly the smell of male sweat and stale tobacco, the touch of rough British Army uniforms and prickly faces. It was over all too quickly and the strangers disappeared and we had our mothers to ourselves again. At some stage we had an invasion of other men. Wonderfully sweet smelling, with softer uniforms and strange accents. The Americans had landed! We soon learned to chant "got any gum chum" as they passed by. I was lucky as in grandfather's shop I could sneak in and listen to them quite often catch their attention. Maybe I got more gum that way.

We also had a diet of American films and once a week I would accompany my mother or aunt to the local picture house, there I would get a vision of where these wonderful men came from. To top all this our school began to receive parcels from the United States, one item I recall was chocolate powder. We were all given a paper twist and this was filled with the delicious mix. No one seemed to realise it was to make a hot drink and we children were allowed to eat it direct from the paper. Paradise, as we dipped in our fingers, licking them clean and ending up with brown mouths. At Christmas we also received gifts from the children of the USA. What memories.

Of course it was not always fun and good times and as I got older I recall the beginning of fear grip me when the doodle bugs arrived. I would sit in the shelter waiting for the dreadful moment when the engine would cut out wondering if it would land on my house or school. I seem to recall that the Americans seemed to be in my vicinity until the end of the war. I did not understand it at the time but my grandfather made quite a stand when some white GIs insisted that they should be served before their black colleagues. His policy was first come, first served, and if they did not like it he would open his shop to black GIs only. Up until that stage I do not think I'd been aware that there was any difference.

I was 10 when the war ended and our new-found friends departed. Our own men slowly returned and as children we had to adapt to a change in the family hierarchy. One-tenth of my personal century had passed. As a generation we were well adjusted, fit, happy, well-educated, but then that lifestyle had been the norm and we had nothing else to compare it with".

Zela Charlton from the UK sent us this moving childhood memory of the Second World War.

"I became a Pacifist on my tenth birthday. That was when I realised that 'the enemy' is really just another person, made up of flesh and blood just the same as I am. My birthday is on August the fifteenth and my tenth birthday was in 1940. I was evacuated from London to a farm in the South of England and I had been allowed to invite two boys from a neighbouring farm to a small birthday tea.

It was a perfect summers day - as they all were that summer of the Battle of Britain. We were inside eating sandwiches and homemade jam when we heard the familiar sound of machine-guns and aeroplane engines so we all ran out to look up at the clear blue sky. It was crisscrossed with white tracery but in the midst there were the dark darting shapes of the planes. As we watched there was a burst of smoke from one and suddenly one of the shapes was descending, twirling and emitting smoke. As well, white parachutes appeared to blosson suddenly and one of them came down - oh, so slowly it seemed - into the field opposite our cottage. Almost as soon as he had landed 'Dad's Army' was there. I do not think they actually had pitchforks, but they certainly were carrying big sticks. They kept us children back but we watched them escort a grey figure, shaken and stumbling back across the field. The boys and I watched until he was driven off in a local farmers elderly car and then we dashed for our bicycles . We had seen where the plane had come down behind the trees and before anyone thought to stop us we were off to see what was happening there. It was about two miles away, but we could see the column of smoke rising in the clear air.

We left our bikes at the edge of the wood and walked in cautiously. I suppose that we thought that the Germans - the Enemy - might jump out with their guns and capture us. More likely we just did not think. I dropped behind and took a slightly different path from my two companions. There was an unpleasant smell of burning. I found a curved piece of grey-green metal - it had a small plate screwed on to it - "Junkers 88" it said, and various numbers. Then I saw a long boot lying under a bush. I picked it up. It contained a leg. That moment made me grow up very quickly and gave me an instant understanding of my own mortality and of the common humanity of people on both sides of a war".

Michael Pal wrote to us from Australia about his mother's experiences during the Second World War:

" I would like to mention my mother's family and her hometown of Apatin in what is now Serbia. Everyone hears about what happened to the Russians and the Jews, etc., but I have yet to hear anything about the plight of the Donauschwabs. These were the Germans who were asked to farm the swamps of the Batschka area of the Danuabe, about 200 kilometres south of Budapest and further. They did not force anyone off their land. They set up vibrant, fruitful communities and lived in peace with their neighbours, the Hungarians, Serbs, Croats, Jews, et.al. for over two centuries until World War 2.

My family was typical of most, in that with the onset of WWII, they wished to remain isolated from the conflict, and wait for the end and then continue on with their lives with whoever were to be their new masters, as they had successfully done in WWI. This was not to be the case. The Russians came through, followed by the partisans, and one Christmas Eve 1944, my mother's family, along with every German in the town was made to leave their houses as they were, without taking anything, and sent to the concentration camps of Krushiwil, etc. (n.b.: phonetic spelling). They were made to rot there for years on starvation diets, with no medical attention, watching their loved ones either shot, starve, or die of some easily curable disease.

My mother escaped, during the night, walking miles to escape across the border with Hungary. It is a gripping story, of capture, return to the camp, searches for medicine and other relatives and then eventual escape after meeting a sympathetic border guard. The story did not end there. Exile in Hungary was short-lived, as that country was in turmoil and rapidly turning Communist. Escape to Vienna only led to internment in dreadful conditions. Despite the fact that they were as much Austrian as the Viennese, they were not accepted by Austria and had to look for eventual escape to the welcoming land of Australia.

I feel it is a story that should be told to a wider audience. No one cared about them then, and it seems no one cares about them now, the story of the Donauschwabs should take its place in the history of the tragedies of this century. They are a small group, who, by their very original nature, have fitted in well to their adopted homelands. They are also aging rapidly and unless their story is recorded shortly, there will be few with vivid enough recollections to be of any value to future generations wanting to avoid the horrors of ethnic cleansing.

The Donauschwabs suffered the ethnic cleansing horrors of the Serbs nearly 50 years before the Osijek and Vukovar Croats and the Bosnian Muslims. For the overwhelming majority of them, the only crime that the Donauschwabs committed was that of being German".

Michael Pal

Anita Chaberman wrote to us from Belgium about her experiences as a 'hidden child' victim of the Second World War:

"I was a Jewish child in Belgium, seven years old in July 1942 when my father and mother were arrested by the Nazis and deported to Auschwitz where they died. I happened to be at the time on vacation at my former nanny's home in the Belgian countryside. As soon as she got news about my parents' fate, she decided I would change name and pass for a daughter she had had before getting married. Her husband agreed, and they thus saved my life. I spent three years with them, going to church and school, and managed never to mix things up and to put us all at risk.

After the war, I was claimed by my surviving grandmother, aunts and uncles. As I could not hide my reluctance to go and live with them, who I hardly knew, they forbade me to stay in touch with the nanny who had saved me. I was able to disobey and go and see her only when I was sixteen. I lost faith in God and trust in about anybody at the time. Nowadays, I am still in touch with the second and third generation of my saviours.

It took almost fifty years for all similarly 'hidden children' to overcome some kind of blackout reaction and start talking about that part of their life, comparing the variety/unity of their situations, and realising how many of them there had been (3,000 were hidden in Belgium alone, more than 15,000 in the world). A first gathering of former hidden children took place in 1991 in New York, with 1,800 participants from the world over, and it was a very emotional event. More such gatherings were organised since, and I am now part of a small group of friends who lived through similar situations and talk about it regularly.

I wish I could get in touch with people or organisations who are interested in studying and summarising our experience and lengthy digestion of it, and in putting it to good use to help new generations of children traumatised by war and its sequels - in Rwanda, the Balkans and other places - or torn between cultures, such as second generation immigrants, to cope with such situations that can affect them for life". Anita Chaberman

(If you would like to contact Anita Chaberman then send an email to My Century and we will forward it to her)

Thomas Orszag-Land is a poet, translator and foreign correspondent. 'Irene's Seige' is from the first chapter of a forthcoming semi-autobiographical novel in verse.

We may as well begin with that single bed which
became my home in the winter of '44
when communal affairs assumed a dismaying mask
and the threat of panic was graver even than death.
A cosy bed although without a headboard,
its pillows piled against the freezing damp wall
at the entrance of the air-raid shelter beneath
the fascist Arrowcross Party's district office.
I shared that bed through the siege of Budapest
with Irene, my mother, and my two big brothers,
one 11, the other 15 years of age,
an orphaned, hunted family of Jews in hiding.

The bed stank: my dysentery was beyond control.
Its stench polluted the overcrowded cellar
filled day and night by gun-toting Nazis in constant
hysterical fear of the unremitting advance
of the Russians approaching the gates, and forced underground
by the waves of bombing raids of the Western allies.
The law in that final phase of the siege prescribed
the summary execution of any carrier
of communicable disease, such as myself.
Perhaps I owe my life to the cotton wool
which I nightly stole from the nearby first-aid station --
It blocked the single loo. That was blamed for the odour.

My mother had sought refuge from murder in Auschwitz,
with forged identity papers I still treasure,
in that howling den of hatred. A desperate ploy:
she had posed as the wife of an officer at the front
and claimed a vacant, comfortably furnished flat
in the building cleared of decent folks by the fascists.
Our sixth-floor flat, its windows blown with the blasts
and devoid of food, had belonged to a banker's family
We had engaged in a calculated act
of audacious gamble, deliberately seeking out
the hunters in the hope that they would least
expect to find the hunted within their pack.

Even I knew the odds But the only alternatives
at that time would have been the deathmarch of Jews
or terror and probable death in the ghetto exposed
to hunger, disease and the fancy of uniformed bandits.
Our plan for survival was tested countless times
when we might have slipped up on the details of routine
existence with the killers at such close quarters.
We were observed all the time by a constant queue
that stretched past the bed to the overflowing lavatory.
There were questions asked about the persistent theft
of first-aid supplies. One evening in a rare lull
of the air-raids, Irene was arrested by the Gestapo.

At the foot of the bed stood Victor the wolf inspecting
the waiting children huddled in fear and silence.
The guardsman was dressed like a hero. His Hitler moustache,
was carefully sculpted, his uniform freshly pressed,
and his three-quarter burgundy leather jacket glowed,
his gunholster glittered in the paraffin light.
The game is up, he announced, we know who you are.
Your mother is off to the Danube, feeding the fish.
If you are stupid you'll follow with the next batch.
But if you are smart and admit to the truth while you may,
you can live through the siege in a home we run for nice
little Jewboys.
You know you can trust me. What do you say?

But George the oldest mustered his dignity:
How dare you slander the sons and wife of an officer
above your rank? How dare you insult his family?
And Paul piled it on: You can only act brave with children
behind the lines while our father is fighting the Russians...
Just wait until mother comes home! For my part, I stared|
between his eyes very hard and tried not to blink.
Did our ferocious insistence confuse the ambush?
What else might explain why Victor failed to apply
the Arrowcross test and look beneath the sheets
for a proof of our race in a country where only Jews
and foreigners had their male children circumcised?

And Irene? Half a century later, I reconstruct
the drama from her old stories, probably accurate.
She was small and strong. She was protected by passion.
A butcher's daughter in love with her gentleman husband,
at 37 she must have been at her prime,
entirely devoted to surviving the siege.
Expressive, brown, widely set eyes, high cheekbones, arched brow,
a firm and generous body tried by hunger.
In happier days, a mischievous brother once chased
me into the bathroom where she stood reaching out
for the towel: she smiled down at me like a goddess and stamped
into my heart the glory of female beauty.

COPYRIGHT reserved by the Author.

Tim Matthews from the UK has sent this memory of his Grandfather, William Bromwich.

"He was an official fire watcher in Coventry in 1940 and 1941. This job involved spending nights suspended above Coventry in a tall metal tower. This was whilst the city (like London) was being subjected to sustained bombardment of a scale unknown at that time in human civilization. One night,one of the worst nights of bombing, my grandfather with binoculars in hand heard a loud constant knocking sound. Worried that someone or something was trying to bring his tower down he looked anxiously down but the tower was intact. Many minutes passed and more bombers flew overhead. Then my grandfather realised what the noise was. It was the sound of his knees knocking together."

Paul Short from Britain has sent us his view of a crucial point before the Second World War:

I think that 1938 was a key moment in the 20th century. It was the year of Munich. Had the UK and France not have backed down, Germany would have been defeated much earlier. This would have prevented the Holocaust, the oppression of much of Europe and the state of Europe today would have been different. Hitler was bluffing at Munich - the German army was half the size of 1939; the Luftwaffe was small and could not function in bad weather; the Czech army was fairly strong and its fortifications were impressive. The French army outnumbered the Germans; the British Navy blockade would have starved Germany of raw materials. Germany had no Russian pact as it did in 1939. There would have been no defeat of France - the war would have been a shorter re-run of World War One. 1938 was a missed chance for the West and Europe, as Churchill and some of the Cabinet saw at the time.

Roger Booth was a child living in Plymouth in England when the Second World War was declared.

"War was declared. What did it mean to me, aged seven? For adults it stimulated rationing, regulations, call-ups, restrictions, separations, grand predictions of eventual victory. However to any civilian in any city, to any child, the tangible evidence that the real war had started was to be bombed by enemy planes or, of course, to be occupied by their forces.

Plymouth, our modest sized city, was a royal naval port and therefore a prime target. The river Tamar - the border between Devon and Cornwall - was a good broad aiming mark for those attacking the impressive dockyard on its east bank forming the Devonport base of the city.

The German bombers came in well disciplined squadrons to destroy naval ships and installations, and with an intent to induce our island populace to a mood of surrender.

My mother was.pregnant, her baby was due and she was taken to Greenbank hospital, in the city. Her fourth child was delivered, a girl. Then the hospital was hit. My mother only remembers screaming as the white ward ceiling split asunder from the blast and its detritus showered her bed. Her newly arrived baby had been taken to a side ward so it was some hours before she knew whether her daughter had survived. She had, although many other babies had been killed as well as staff, including the very young nurse who had attended my mother. The war had really started with a bang.

So I knew that death could come whistling out of the sky with a direct hit, or from blast, or the roaring fires caused by incendiaries. My mother's large extended family would send out runners to its echelons after a night's bombing, to check that everyone was safe. Some whole families left the city to lie in the spluttering darkness among fields and hedgerows in the neighbouring countryside. Sailors had come home on leave, disorientated in searching for their homes as whole streets had been obliterated and their jagged remains shunted into semi-orderly rubble. A naval uncle, Uncle George, had squatted with us in an Anderson shelter one night to mutter in complaint 'I haven't come home on leave to be bloody bombed . . .' as the whistling missiles came down from the droning Junkers and Heinkels overhead.

We went to school through streets choked with firemen's hoses, lying like twisted dead serpents. If the water mains had been cut people sallied forth with tin baths, saucepans and buckets to get water from municipal lorries.

My little sister had arrived with a bang hadn't she? She and my mother were both lucky to be alive. No wonder I felt , so protective of this bobbing headed, small creature with drooling lip who was to be christened Elaine.

When the sirens sounded anew I used to hold her gas respirator on my hip and by my curled extended arm. It was a sinister, broad thing. A black cradle into which the whole baby was to be slid, to be monitored through a perspex facial screen. Hand bellows were fitted to the respirator's side to help with the infant's breathing. I had practised with these but dreaded the idea of having to put my little sister inside in the case of a real gas attack. Whenever we mustered ourselves for the shelter on the wail of the siren we would always hear the air raid wardens shouting up the stairs, often in reprimand, as generally my mother was last to leave the house. She was usually hurriedly heating milk to put in a thermos for the baby's feed as we didn't know how long we might be in the shelter. There was a shortage of adult help. The wardens were generally good at their job and were anxious for our safety in their shouts, as the oncoming roar of planes could already be heard overhead.

So I knew that infancy, childhood, being grown- up held no cheque book of survival. All were at risk. I knew too that other cultures, other societies, were already suffering- worse dangers and horror. I had seen a newsreel at the Odeon where, probably in Poland or Russia, well wrapped women with tight scarves on their heads were wailing in the snow on being presented with their dug out dead. As some mother- peered at a frozen thick clothed corpse to recognise a son,, husband or brother she shrieked to the skies and beat her arms in a language that was foreign to no one. These dead had mummified thick bent arms and legs frozen in their static last attitudes of submission. As the sonorous tones of the newsreel commentator droned on in propagandist mode the images on the screen shimmered and wobbled as my eyes filled with tears.

One night the bombing had already started before we had reached the cavernous municipal shelter, warned under the local gardens. A local paper factory had already been straddled with incendiaries. The building was well alight and I remember the heat of its blazing on my cheek as its burning produce swirled and tunnelled around the street like f fiery burning kites. We scurried to the shelter, I carrying my sister' s respirator as if it were a small boat.

When the all clear was sounded we returned to our flat to find that the living room had been heavily damaged. Some floating pieces of paper from the destroyed factory, entering through a shattered window, had set the room alight. There was a brown scorched wall, -a blackened armchair with the remaining ash hump of its seat in which my f ather used to sit to listen to our family KB radio when he was home on leave. The f let was habitable but this disfigured part in which we generally lived and had our being seemed now to constitute a dire warning."

Josef Chalupsky sent us his experiences of the last days of the Second World War in Prague.

"In the last days of the Second World War in Prague it seemed that the end of the war would not be very dramatic. On May 5th inhabitants of Prague rose up against the Germans and relatively easily got some arms and power over the town. On May 6th from the south came the strong army ASS Waffen with artillery and began to overcome poorly armed Czechs. During the day they gained southern parts of Prague. In the night from May 6th to May 7th we were pulled out from our houses and we found ourselves, children, in a hellish situation. Half the houses in our street were in flames and the other ones were set on fire. With groups of other inhabitants we were guided to another quarter of rented houses, a kilometer away. We were crammed like sardines into these flats, about 10-15 in a room. Why they did this we could only guess. A block of houses near us was set on fire, fortunately it was empty of people. We could hear incessant shooting during out transportation to the rented houses. And we heard from the radio the atrocities being carried out on the civilians of Prague. While we were crammed into these houses we prayed to God thinking that the last minutes of our lives had come.

In the afternoon of May 8th we heard that the Germans began to run in a hurry and the following day, May 9th we were free. In that morning twilight of the newly coming day we went out into the streets. On the corner of a street was an older lady standing over a little kettle of hot soup, she gave soup to the pale ghostly people returning to life. Walking back to our home we passed a large group of civilians dead on the street, shot down for nothing. We had the good luck that we survived, and I thanked God that my life had been saved. Long after, in those post-war years, I thought I am living and I can study. And I cannot ever forget the unknown lady having warmed our bodies and souls".