Quote:
Originally Posted by John Rogers
Harry we had the Police and army Demo men visit our homes and took many of the kids souvenirs', some kids had found ack-ack shells that never hit anything and came down in the streets and the kids were picking them up and using them to trade other stuff for them, fins were a good item for trade.
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Yup! I lived just outside Plymouth and we became shrapnel and bomb fins collectors and swappers. Incendiary bomb fins were common and not desirable items for swaps. Dad was in the ARP in Plymouth every night and had some serious dents in his helmet which he said were from shrapnel, probably smaller pieces than the hunks which we bartered with. We had a Junkers 88 missed our roof by literally feet and crashed in the field behind us, with bombs exploding all over the field. We kids were there first thing the next morning, all trying to get around the back of the policemen who were guarding the aircraft from us souvenir hunters.
What horrified us all was the toys, books, chocolate, etc booby traps which the dear Germans dropped all around, all capable of causing serious damage to kids. Total war, he called it.