Anderson Shelters

My husband lived in Plymouth, England during the war, and he was bombed out 3 times. He was only 11 years old when the war ended, so he remembers being very frightened when the bombing was going on. Many mornings, he'd walk to school past bodies in the street, but it was such a common sight people soon got used to it, unless they stumbled across someone they knew. One morning, the family emerged from the Anderson shelter to find their house and 6 others in the street completely demolished. Had they been in the house at the time, they would all have been killed, so the Anderson shelter saved their lives. The house was rebuilt by the government in 1946/7. My husband's grandfather paid extra to have more modern fireplaces put in, as the government rebuild programme would only rebuild the house as it was before demolition. The Anderson shelter was removed when the garden was landscaped. The builders were real craftsmen as well, because the plaster in that house is still so good you can paint directly on the walls without needing to hide faults with wallpaper. My husband inherited the house from his mother 7 years ago, but we sold it last year to move to Spain. It was quite a wrench for him to leave the house and all its memories.