To find out how you or your family can be a part in the most comprehensive record ever compiled of a nation at war, why not come along to one of our People's War workshops at the BBC Learning Centre?

The workshops explain more about the background to the People's War project, and show how anyone can add their personal or family memories and mementoes to this unique internet archive.

Caspar Mason, of BBC History's World War Two team said: "The People's War is a way of honouring the memory of those who sacrificed so much. Maybe your story is a brief anecdote, or maybe it's a six-year odyssey - whatever your experience, you are welcome to contribute."

Call 01452 418180 or e-mail clare.parrack@bbc.co.uk for forthcoming People's War workshop dates and times. Or call in at any time and Learning Centre staff can show you how you can add your personal contribution via our computers when it suits you.

Personal photos can be scanned and, given notice, we can photograph other memorabilia for you. Pictures can then be submitted online with your People's War contribution without the precious originals leaving your possession.

Wartime life remembered

Here are some of the stories that emerged at a People's War workshop in D-day anniversary week, June 2004.

Mary and Les Weatherburn, from Gloucester, were both children in London during the war, and were evacuated to the country. Les remembers bomb-scarred London as "like a Boy's Own adventure - we were never scared and had great fun picking up shrapnel and exploring bomb-sites."

Geoff Johnson, from Gloucester, only discovered in 1980 that his father, who served in the Allied Expeditionary Force in the Second World War, had been a boy soldier in the 1914-18 conflict, who lied about his age to join up. He is pictured with some of his Dad's papers - he is now trying to trace his full military record.

It was out of the frying pan into the fire for William Ramsden, from Shurdington. After growing up in India where his father served in the Army - and where the family survived a severe earthquake in 1935 - he and his brother and mother came to England when war broke out and stayed with her relatives in London's East End.

At 14, he caught mumps and the doctor told his mother she was on no account to let him out of bed until he was better. She took him literally, with the result that young William ended up spending 10 days of the Blitz hiding under the bedclothes while the rest of the family took to the air raid shelter!

William survived but his father Arthur, a battery sergeant-major in the Royal Artillery, was not so lucky - he died on active service in April 1945, three weeks before the end of the war. William is pictured with his father's military badge, embroidered by his father as part of his occupational therapy while he was in hospital with malaria.

War stories and volunteer help wanted

BBC People's War

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