Gwen Fippard remembers the day war broke out

Gwen Fippard says that, even as a child, she knew the declaration of war was serious. Photo / Dean Purcell

Gwen Fippard was just 8 years old on September 3, 1939. Today, aged 78, the Devonport woman Gwen Fippard remembers the day war broke out.

I was playing happily with my best friend, Audrey Wilson, in the back garden of her house, just across the street from mine in our quiet cul-de-sac in a suburb in southeast London.

It was a warm, sunny morning.

Suddenly we were called to the house. Her parents were standing in their small kitchen with the wireless switched on. Audrey and I were told to be quiet and to listen. We stood side by side on the step by the back door and heard the BBC announcer solemnly say, "This is London".

We stood motionless. Then the voice of the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, speaking to us from 10 Downing St, announcing that we were now at war with Germany. Then followed the playing of the National Anthem, God Save the King.

Although I was only 8 years old and Audrey just 7, we felt the chill of that declaration with adult understanding. No one could then predict that we two little girls would be teenagers before the war would end, or what we would see and experience in the years to come. We just knew then that this was a momentous time.

Mr Wilson said quietly, "I think you should go home now", and took my hand to walk me the few yards across the street to my own family. There was no panic, no outward show of anxiety - although doubtless felt by our parents - simply a sort of, "well, that's that," acceptance of what had now been started.

About 15 minutes later the air raid siren sounded. We all sat down together, waiting and listening, listening. We heard no strange sounds, though we strained our ears. Then the "all clear" came - what could it have meant? We later discovered it was a false alarm so all was well - that time - but we were to hear those air raid sirens many hundreds of times, with devastating results, over the next six years.

During those tumultuous years, 60,585 civilians were killed in Britain by enemy action, and 86,175 were seriously injured and detained in hospital. No record was kept of the numbers injured but not hospitalised following treatment.

No medals, no war pensions for the injured survivors, no names carved in stone. The civilian population is mostly forgotten, except by those who lived through it. Yet surely they also served ...