I HAVE still got the E&W Lucas shovel that came with the purchase of an Anderson air raid shelter in Southampton.

I remember my father and brother digging the foundations in the clay for the shelter while all the neighbours stood watching saying the Germans would never get through our air defence to attack the town.

At the first air raid siren that went off in 1941 announcing the approach of German bombers and the neighbours were all calling out to see if they could seek refuge in our Anderson shelter.

We ended up with half the road packed into an corrugated iron Anderson shelter meant for six.

When the air raid warden called to see where everybody was and finding them packed into our shelter and said everybody not of this address

"Get out, I can't have everybody killed by only one bomb," he said.

At the end of the fight it was Winston Churchill who said those immortal lines, 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few'.

Doug Mills

Poole