by Tim O'Dell

Created on: June 12, 2009

This story isn't about me. I wasn't alive during those years. It's about my father; he was a small boy, but memories of The War haunted him all his life. Brought up in historic Cambridge, he showed me the pock-holes, which still remain, from the dogfight he witnessed in the skies above the colleges. The puckered, deep, worn indentations are testament to an era that will forever remain a stain in the history books.

Unlike the distant tales of Kings and Queens who dominate the past of my home town, my father's memories created a living history of life during the war. A time of separation, abandonment, survival; my fathers struggles epitomise a dark period for Britain. A period of uncertainty and fear, of heroism and human spirit, a period that will echo throughout the ages.

Peter was nine. One of five children he had two elder sisters and a brother and sister younger than him. They lived in New Street, a cramped Victorian terrace, condemned not long after the war. At the time there were six of them living out of two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, back and front rooms, an outside lavatory. Peter's father was in the home guard. Stationed in Doncaster, 120 miles north of Cambridge, he was away for long periods of time and Peter's mother was the sole guardian of all five children.

Living conditions were not comfortable. Peter, his younger brother Jake, and their baby sister Wendy all shared a bedroom with their older sisters Irene and Pat. It was a desperate time for the family, and Irene and Pat, both in their late teens, were forced to assist in their sibling's upbringing. On the few occasions their father did return home they would often hear their parent's rowing in the bedroom next door. These arguments would last well into the night and would, occasionally, stop abruptly with the harsh sound of flesh meeting flesh with enough force to echo through the upper rooms.

The war in Europe had been raging for three years by this time, and there were still regular bombing raids. Peter would tremble whenever the siren sounded. Harsh, ululating, piercing; its warning would blast the deadly skies as the distant throb of the Luftwaffe grew steadily louder.

Then mother would be by his side. Grabbing his hand, along with the other two younger children, they would run full pelt down the garden, and into the Anderson Shelter. Climbing down the four or five steps onto the partially sunken floor, they would sit on crates while the corrugated

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