RECENT publications in the Echo and the national press, together with the television programmes have brought back many memories of the Second World War.

I was born on February 20, 1932 in Fishers Road, Totton and at the time of the Blitz was attending the Junior School in School Road, Totton. My father who was in the Hampshire Regiment from the end of the First World War was Senior Warden in charge of ARP post in School Road. As a result I heard all sorts of things and was eventually told where planes had crashed.

One of my first memories of the Battle of Britain was dad calling me out of the air raid shelter in our back garden and pointing to all the German aircraft flying north with our fighters swooping in and out and dad saying: “You will never see anything like that again.”

Each night the air raid siren sounded and my mother, two sisters and I went either to the shelter, or in the wet and cold weather the cupboard under the stairs, and listened to anti-aircraft guns particularly those in Jacobs Gutter Lane, and occasionally the house was shaken by a bomb exploding. Dad was out on his bike checking on bombs and fires, but he always managed to look in to see we were all right. One event sticks in my memory of dad coming in with friend Ted Smith just as a bomb exploded and Mum saying “what was that?” and both of them saying, “nothing”.

The air raid shelters for the school were on the corner of School Road and Bartram Road, and when the siren went we all marched up the road to the shelters, with my friend John Moody and I being last, he having to play the piano while the children marched out, and I to get two Davy lamps from the store and to help check that the classrooms were empty. John and I were choir boys at Eling Church and when we got to the shelters the headmaster got us to sing to the young children although Mr Rowland didn’t always approve of some of the songs my dad had taught me.

I remember later in the war when the Tar works was bombed. It was a Tuesday morning, the air raid siren had gone off and we had marched to the shelters. The ‘All Clear’ sounded and as it was near to dinner time we were told to go home. A little later I heard a plane and looking out the back door which faced south, saw a German plane flying low over the houses in School Road heading towards the New Forest. It was close enough for me to see clearly the pilot. At that moment Mrs Brinkley, the lady living next door rushed out, saying: “Mrs Ireland they are dropping leaflets” until one of the “leaflets” exploded. Sadly several people were killed and there was a great deal of damage. My father told me later that in his opinion as the wind was from the south-west the flames blew over Eling Great Marsh or some of the houses in Eling would have been burnt down.

Apart from the bombs and damaged property we also witnessed those burned and injured in the fighting. We are now witnessing our brave soldiers dead and injured returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and think that in this age of technology we really haven’t learnt much.

WILLIAM E IRELAND, East Wellow