Daniel Lavelle’s article Shelters from the storm (21 August) omits one vital point. In the usual penny-pinching ways of governments, during 1938-39 you could get an Anderson shelter free only if you passed a means test. My dad was a Port of London Authority foreman and didn’t qualify for a free one, nor did our neighbour who was a policeman. Another neighbour was a widow from the first world war and had a shelter. So, from the start of the Blitz in 1940, 11 of us from three houses sat in her shelter on a motley collection of chairs listening to the bombs raining down. After three weeks, we were so exhausted from lack of sleep that we returned to our houses and slept on mattresses on the floors for next six months. Later in the war, the government offered anyone with a garden a free shelter.

Olive Townsley

Bridgend

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