Central London was a terrifying place to grow up during World War Two, with houses and sometimes entire streets being flattened by enemy bombers.

People had no choice but to send their children to the countryside, and around 3million were separated from their parents and evacuated.

Eight-year-old Peter Johnson and his sister Betty, 10, lived in Battersea until they were evacuated in 1941. The neighbourhood had been visited by Winston Churchill a few months earlier after a mine dropped on a parachute had detonated, destroying six streets.

When they arrived in Exeter, Peter and Betty lived with various families, until they ended up in what seemed to be an old man's boarding house. They wrote to their mother Elsie and said they wanted to run away, and she travelled down to collect them.

But instead of going back to wartime Battersea, Elsie took the children to Elstree, where their father Kenneth, a soldier in the Coldstream Guards, was stationed at a large redbrick house in Barnet Lane, called Abbotsbury House.

In a fascinating book published by Elstree and Borehamwood Museum, Mr Johnson remembers growing up in the village, in the early days when it was full of soldiers and later, while the war took its toll on Britain and claimed the lives of dozens of villagers fighting overseas.

In 1941 most of the houses along Barnet Lane were requisitioned by the Government, which valued Elstree because it was near the RAF's operations in Bushey and Stanmore, the Special Operations unit at the Thatched Barn, and the aircraft manufacturing bases in Radlett and Hatfield.

Mrs Johnson and her children moved into a house behind the Forge in Elstree High Street, which had been put up for rent by Mrs Saunders, who wanted to provide a home for a soldiers' family.

Growing up in Elstree was fun for young Peter. The village had a petrol station, several pubs, a butcher's shop, a grocery, a branch of Victoria Wine, a tobacconists and a barber. The nearest cinema was in Borehamwood, and Peter remembers the audiences would boo loudly whenever German soldiers appeared on the newsreels.

The Coldstream Guards left Elstree in 1942, and held a farewell parade at the school fields where the Musicians Estate now stands.

"Elstree didn't feel the same after the Coldstream Guards departed. There were no Brengun carriers rattling along the High Street as they returned home after manoeuvres, and no Army lorries blocking the narrow country lanes."

Peter's father was training in Somerset, but he was able to make two visits to Elstree before being sent into Europe. "He told us that very soon he would be going away to fight the Germans, but didn't know for how long. When the war was over he would come back home, find us a nice place to live and buy a car and a tent so we could go camping at the seaside for our summer holidays."

Soon after Mrs Johnson found out her father was dying from cancer, and she took her children to stay with her parents in St Ives.

School was difficult but Peter liked his grandmother, and settled into life in the country, but more bad news arrived in March 1943, when Mrs Johnson received a telegram.

Her husband had been fighting for Montgomery in North Africa, helping the Desert Rats push Rommel's army out of the desert. The Germans had laid dense minefields to fortify their defences. Mr Johnson was killed by one of these mines, and the telegram was telling Elsie her husband would not be coming home.

"Mum's world fell apart when she received that telegram."

The family went back home to Elstree, where Mrs Johnson took a job at the De Haviland factory, now Centennial Place, and Betty went to Hillside School.

Peter lived the rest of his war years in Elstree, until one special day in 1945: "I was playing in Barnet Lane when we heard the church bells ringing, the warning for an imminent German invasion. It was frightening, and I started to run home to warn Mum that something dreadful must have happened.

"An open top car sped down Barnet Lane, the occupants were waving and shouting something to me. They were trying to tell me the war was over. I dashed home to tell Mum, thinking how excited she would be, but she just burst into tears."

Peter Johnson's fascinating book, My Elstree Childhood, is a treasure trove of interesting anecdotes from Elstree's history, recalling first-hand what it was like to grow up in the village during a most remarkable era in its history. Copies costing only £4 are available from Elstree and Borehamwood Museum, or The Borehamwood & Elstree Times, 1 Drayton Road, Borehamwood.