Veren Lawrence was a teenager when the bombs began to fall on London.
Seventy years after moving to Dunedin as a "wartime bride'', the 93-year-old RSA stalwart can clearly recall the confusion and fear in her home city.
"I'll never forget being in London when war broke out,'' Mrs Lawrence says.
"We had an air raid shelter, which my father dug at the bottom of the garden.
"As soon as it got to dusk, the air raid siren would go and we would all leave the house and go down to the air raid shelter.''
She was 18 and living at home with her mother, father and older sister when bombing in London began on September 7, 1940.
Her two brothers were at boarding school but had been moved to a safe area in the countryside.
The underground air raid shelter was big enough to stand up in but entering it required sliding through a small trap-door barely higher than ground level, Mrs Lawrence said.
It was equipped with bunks, food and a spirit lamp but was far from comfortable, she says.
"We would hear the bombs dropping on the railway line just beside us.
"They were always after the railway line.
"While you were running to the shelter, they were dropping bombs.
"We were terrified some nights. There was a lot of crying and screaming,'' Mrs Lawrence said.
The family home was close to a railway line so it was targeted regularly by the Luftwaffe, she says.
At the time, Mrs Lawrence, nee Horne, worked as shorthand typist at a factory in Kent that made small electric motors.
It was eventually taken over by the Royal Navy to supply motors to submarines.
"It was all secret.
"We had to sign a paper that [said] once we left the building, we wouldn't talk about it,'' Mrs Lawrence says.
Being around navy officers and getting to know them well eventually led to her and a friend joining the Wrens - the Women's Royal Naval Service - when she was 20.
"I went down on the spur of the moment and then I had to go home and tell my mother. She wasn't very happy,'' she says.
In a speech to school pupils in 2002, Mrs Lawrence spoke of the journey to Alexandria, her time aboard the HMS Nile and in Egypt.
"We were strafed from the air by the Germans on our way out and bombs dropped around us.''
She lived in a convent in Alexandria, Egypt, from 1942, serving as the chief officer's shorthand typist.
At the end of the war, in 1945, near Jerusalem, Mrs Lawrence met her future husband, George.
He was a captain in the New Zealand Army's 23rd Battalion.
In a diary extract from 1945, Mrs Lawrence wrote, "Spent the day on the beach swimming and met [George] and had a wonderful evening dancing down in the village.''
She became a "war bride'', moving to Dunedin in 1946.
She and Mr Lawrence became involved in the RSA soon after settling in Dunedin, a link that remains unbroken.
The couple had three children.
Mr Lawrence died in 1990 aged 72.
"We used to go to the dawn service early in the morning.
"We would come from the RSA after having had a cup of tea,'' she says.
Days would be spent preparing for Anzac Day at the Kensington Army Hall.
It had become harder to do all the Anzac Day preparations and commemorations since moving into Montecillo a year ago, she says.
But it was still a special time of the year for her.
"I have been involved with it for so long, it's just part of me.
"I do look forward to it as I meet all my friends.''
She was honoured by the RSA for 60 years' service in 2008.
Asked whether she reminisced on Anzac Day, Mrs Lawrence said she preferred to just enjoy the day.
"Before I got old, I used to think about it [war] a lot.
"[Now] we don't really discuss the war. I suppose it's something we weren't too fond of,'' she says.
However, Anzac Day was "great''.
"It's wonderful.
"It's the really big day.''
