The following recollections from Eve Stevens were provided with her kind permission by Cherry Forray, whose own comments are included in italics:

My parents, Bill and Win Ashburnham, were newlyweds in September, 1939. They were married in March and moved into a new home at 3 Ayrway, in Rise Park, Romford. Their next door neighbors, Bill and Eve Stevens, were also newlyweds.

Bill and I first got to know Win and Bill when they bought the house which was a semi to ours, and used to come each Sunday with a bag of wood and coal to light a fire in the sitting room to air the house.

War started on the 3rd September, 1939, by which time Bill and Win were married and settled in. Bill A was called up but Bill S was in a reserved occupation so stayed at home.

I remember the day the war started. Neville Chamberlain made the announcement on the radio that "We are now at war with Germany". Almost immediately the air raid sirens started blaring and we all rushed outside to find nothing was happening.

I went to my job in London next day to find the staff was being dismissed immediately leaving a few seniors to close the firm down. Win still went to work in London each day and because of very unreliable train services, Bill S took her in his car.

The Anderson shelters given us by the Government caused a headache. A deep hole was dug in our garden and another in Win and Bill A's garden so the shelter could be installed. Twelve hours later they were both full of water. In the end one shelter was erected in Win and Bill A's garden under the oak tree and then covered with the soil excavated from the holes [see picture]. Each evening (usually sunset) the Air Raid sirens would go and we (Win, Bill S and I) would rush to the shelter and stay the night. There was one exception, however much shrapnel was flying about, and there was quite a lot, the one whose turn it was would go back to the house to make the cocoa and bring it back to the shelter. This was at nine o'clock each evening. This became a daily routine.

I always knew that a bomb dropped near our house during the war. The crater was still there years later. I used to run up and down the rim of the crater when I was a child (I was born in 1942). It was about 100 yards from our house, in an empty field on Pettits Lane, about half way between Ayrway and Heather Gardens.

I think this was somewhat early in the War. I don't recall an Air Raid shelter then - we may not have. It was one evening. Win's mother-in-law, my Bill, me and Win were in Win's dining room chatting, when we heard this swishing noise of a near falling bomb. We dropped on the floor covering our heads expecting the ceiling would be down any second. The house shook quite violently but remained intact. When we realized we were safe we thankfully got up - but where was Mrs. Ashburnham a lady crippled with rheumatism who we had forgotten for the moment - when a small voice from under the table called out she was alright. Except for the cracked window in Win's house there was no harm done, as the open ground around helped to take the full blast of the bomb.

From the 'incidents' listed in "Ordeal in Romford", I think that bomb must have been "16th/17th October 1940, 7:35 p.m., H.E., Pettits Lane".

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