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The following are memories recalled by Don Puddy, as recorded by Hanover Housing Association in their book 'Tale of the Century' published in 1999.
 When the Second World War started in September 1939 I was just 8 years old. My sister and I lived in Chatham, Kent. As our parents had separated, I lived with my aunt while my 2 year old sister lived with our gran; however we were brought together again when we were evacuated to Sittingbourne. We only stayed there for a few months as our guardians thought we would be in as much danger there as back home.
Chatham had a very large naval dockyard, a Royal Marines Barracks and an Army Barracks. At the time of the war, I would not have been allowed to write this for security reasons -- 'Careless talk costs lives!' was the slogan. I stayed there until the end of the war. It was both an exciting and a frightening time.
When the siren sounded, warning us of an impending air attack, we would hide under the stairs listening to the drone of the German bombers. Many would to on to London but others would be for our town. The bombs would come screeching down as they were targeting the nearby docks, but many hit our houses instead.
We would be praying for them to stop and there was always great relief when the 'all clear' sounded. This was the time of the blackout when we would all cover our windows with black so there was no light to guide the planes. After a raid we children would gather the shrapnel pieces, which we used as swaps just as we did with marbles and conkers.
Then came the Battle of Britain. Hitler and the German leaders thought they could bombard this Country and get us to surrender. For a few months in 1941 the Germans sent everything they had to bomb us into submission, but they did not reckon with the 'Spitfire' and the bravery of our pilots sent to gun down their planes.
It was very exciting watching the planes machine gunning each other -- known as dog fights. Sometimes the pilots had to bail out and we would see them parachuting down. The German pilots who survived the jump were put into Prisoner of War camps which were situated near our town. Some were allowed into town and we could easily identify them as they wore brown uniforms.
I think the British people are strong and united in times of crisis and so Hitler did not succeed. How well I remember the words of our Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, when speaking of the Battle of Britain: 'Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.'
 I thought of Hitler as being like the bully in our school who would beat smaller children to get sweets. I hit him back and he never bothered me after that. For some time our food was rationed and we did not get a lot or much choice of food to eat but we survived. One food I really liked was the tinned egg powder, which we mixed with water and fried. We were told afterwards that it was made of crocodile eggs!
Later in the war, Hitler sent over V1 and V2 bombers which were jet propelled and did not need pilots -- we called them doodlebugs. They were very scary. Their target was really London, but some did not make it. They made a noise as they passed over and when the noise stopped we knew it was about to drop from the sky.
Some would crash into the barrage balloons which floated in the sky attached by wire to the ground -- which was the idea of course. They looked like huge flying elephants.
During the war people were very friendly and helpful to each other, maybe because we never knew whether we would live another day to see each other.
My school was half closed because it had been bombed. We were all given gas masks in case the Germans used gas on us but we never used them. This was just as well as they were smelly, horrible rubber things.
In May 1945 the war was over and all the people in the country celebrated by singing, dancing and drinking in the streets. I found it hard to believe that I would never hear the sirens again.
Sadly, my Aunt died a few months after the war. In those days we left school at the age of 14, so I got a job at the docks as a messenger boy. Later I joined the boys' army and went into the military band and when I was 16 our regiment went to Dortmund in Germany and were due to move on to Berlin.
The regiment was waiting in convoy in large lorries but there had been a dispute with the Russians and they would not let us through. This was what led to the infamous Berlin Wall. The only way in was by air and so we were flown in by American Dakotas.
I was scared because I had never flown before. We were billeted in the Berlin Olympic Stadium and the athletes' changing rooms were used as stables. Our regiment guarded the war criminal, Rudolf Hess, at Spandau Prison.
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