9 October 2011

Hello readers and welcome to my World War 2 blog. A few days ago I was looking through my attic for a photo album and I saw an old trunk that I used during WWII. Out of curiosity I looked into it and found my old diary from when I was a kid. I used to write in it during the war and it tells some of my best (and worst) experiences from when I was a child.

This is the front cover.

21st September 1940

Today I found some coins lying around in a bombed house and I took them and decided to buy a small book from the black market so that I could write a diary about the war and then sell it (after the war)  to a  collector for money.

My mother wanted to keep me and my brother with the family here in London, so we were not evacuated. I wasn't very happy with this decision because it meant that I might not see my friends who were leaving ever again.

Still, some of my friends are staying and we know where to get the best looking pieces of shrapnel to win in the competitions that are held at the end of the day at school.

Yesterday evening, I had just found an egg shaped piece of shrapnel and was about to go into my house when the air raid sirens started blaring like anything. I dropped the box with the piece and rushed home with my family and hoped my cardboard box with the shrapnel would still be there after the raid.

22nd September 1940

How lucky I am!!!!!!!! There was a bomb no less than two streets away from our house (but they missed and hit the middle of the road..) and loads of shrapnel fell onto the road outside it. I can't wait to show my friends. My shrapnel box was unharmed and at school today I won a used bullet at the end of the day.

Our classroom (which had silly pictures of rabbits on the wall) was destroyed in a raid, which means that we got to play games in Ravenscourt Park all day. I got a massive bruise on my leg and our teacher made my enemy miss 45 minutes of the rugby game!

Me and my friends lingered around a bombed house after school and I had a fight with a homeless tramp boy, I won of course and we raided it and we found a cool bronze paperknife. This house ended up as our fortress and we spent the afternoon playing in it!

23rd September 1940

Today the Ministry of Food introduced rationing and everyone over eleven had to apply for a card. So, I had to stand in the shivering cold outside the Post Office, to apply. There were at least one hundred people in front of me.

At last I handed in my application and got a scruffy piece of paper back with 62 clothing tokens, 4 sweet tokens and 50 food tokens. The lady at my local shop is blind so me and my friends decided to see if she would accept blotting paper tokens. We made them at school the day before and I tried to get a bag of bulls eyes from the shop keeper. She took them!!

Then wewent to our fort and to eat our sweets there. The lady will get suspicious if we do this everyday though, so we decided that we should only do it once a week. 

24th September 1940

Today when I woke up my father told me and my brother to get dressed and queue at the cigar shops so he could get four packets of Winston cigars. How could we do this? By trading his tokens in different shops and then swapping around after getting a box.

I missed the full contact rugby game in Wormholt Park and couldn't go with my friends to explore a bombed office. I heard a rumour that all parks will be used to grow potatoes but I hope this is not true as I won't be able to play rugby in the park anymore.

24th September 1940

As I got home I found our family huddled around the wireless listening to one of Churchill's speeches. "Things are looking grim for England," said Father and sighed.
 "It looks like the Nazis are going to invade," said Mother quietly.
I went to bed worriedly and wondered what would happen if they took our Britain away from the British.

9 October 2011

This is all that's left of my diary after 71 years of wear and tear and I really hope you enjoyed it. The boy in the diary is real and he still lives today, sitting in a house in Sheperd's Bush typing up his story.