THE daughter of an unsung war hero has been retelling her father’s story in the hope that others will be able to share her pride.

Grace Cahill, from Tilehurst, dug out this photograph of the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) wardens at a training centre in Chichester in the 1940s, featuring her father, Albert Frederick Smith, pictured third right, and wants to know if readers might recognise any of his colleagues.

She said: “Albert was somewhat shorter than the other members of the squad and therefore was selected to carry out the search of buildings damaged by the bombing in Reading.”

ARP wardens generally patrolled the streets to ensure that blackout regulations were complied with, as well as helping to get people into shelters in the event of a bombing raid. However, Albert found himself in frontline action on Wednesday, February 10, 1943, during the bombing of the People’s Pantry in the town centre, when he cycled into Reading from his home in Calcot Row, in response to the emergency alert.

Grace said: “As many survivors were unconscious or injured this meant that the underground cellars of the older, damaged buildings, needed to be searched individually.

“In most cases the gaps through the buildings were very small and required quite a small person to get through.”

Albert, then aged 40, was considered the ‘ideal candidate’ and squeezed through tiny crevices filled with thick, choking dust to search for survivors with a small torch.

Grace describes how her sister Daphne, who was 11 at the time, clearly remembers looking out their back door to see their father returning – a “poor bedraggled person covered from head to toe in grey dust, exhausted and hardly able to speak because of the dust”.

Grace added: “Later that day, he went to work as usual – resuming his duties as an ARP warden.”

She hopes readers will be able to identify members of their own families in the photograph, and said: “There were, of course, many unsung heroes of World War Two whose stories will never be told but I hope that somewhere a son, daughter or grandchild will be, perhaps unknowingly, the recipient of the gift of life due to the courage and exploits of one person.”