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My name is Diane Kitcher and I was born on 10th December 1933, five and a half years before the start of the Second World War. I lived at 17 Somerset Place in Teignmouth with my parents, William and Edith Hooper, my eldest brother, Derek and my younger brother, Barry. My grandparents, Charles and Emma Boyne also lived with us. Teignmouth was then a small town on the estuary of the River Teign.

I remember that my Dad was a Sergeant in the TA Devonshire Regiment and was called-up right away at the start of the war. Soon after that we were issued with gas masks and, at school, we had to check they worked properly by placing paper underneath the nozzle, taking a breathe and, if the paper stuck to the nozzle, the gas mask was working ok.

To me, at that time, life seemed to continue much as usual — going to school, going out to play — but everywhere you went you had to take your gas mask. Little did I know of the terror that was to come.

When the war started we didn’t have a shelter to protect us from the bombs so we used our cupboard under the stairs. It was made stronger by members of the Durham Light Infantry who were stationed in the hall next to our house. They were all ex-miners. The first time I heard bombs dropping was late at night. The German planes use to fly over us on their way to bomb Plymouth and, on the way back, they would drop any bombs they had left on Teignmouth so as to make their planes lighter for the journey home when their fuel was getting low. That first night they hit the local hospital.

Soon, however, the Germans began ‘tip and run’ raids. They would fly in very low, drop their bombs and machine gun civilians. Never once did they hit the railway line.

I attended Brook Hill Primary School, which was a large three-storey building at the top of a small hill surrounded by houses. Across the road was the local station and railway line. When an air raid started the drill was to get down under our desks with our arms over our heads.

Our school bell always rang at 4pm to signal the end of the school day and hundreds of children would stream out of their classrooms, down the stairs and into the playground. That day, for some unknown reason, (my Uncle Fred was convinced it was the hand of God) they were late ringing the bell. Instead of everyone streaming out of school and into the playground, we were still sitting at our desks when the air raid started.

I heard the breaking of glass in the window to my left and seeing what I now know to be bullets flying across the room to a screen and holes appearing in it. Next, a terrible noise as bombs were dropped either side of the school. I was on my knees under my desk, which was second from the back and everyone was screaming and crying, including me. Plaster and glass was falling all around us and, for some reason, the floor was shaking. When the raid was over, I found myself at the front of the class.

I can’t remember what happened then but I later discovered that a friend of my mother found me wandering around and took me home with her. However, in the meantime, all the parents were racing to the school as news got out that the school had been bombed. My mother found my eldest brother, Derek but imagine her horror when she couldn’t find me. Although her friend had been trying to help by taking me home, it was a worrying and frightening time for my mother until she found me. When she did finally see me, I was almost unrecognisable as I was covered from head to foot in dust from the plaster and my legs were covered in blood from crawling through broken glass. It was only when I became a parent myself that I realised what she must have been going through, not knowing if her children were alive or dead.

Every Sunday my brother Derek and I attended Sunday School at the Gospel Hall, which was at the top of the town from where we lived. One Sunday my mother was so fed up with us, because we were being naughty, that she decided to leave early to take us to Sunday School. The walk took us up the town across the railway line. Our mother had just retraced her steps home again when in came the planes at low level from the sea. The same thing happened again — we were on the floor with a terrible noise all around us, bombs dropping and children screaming. Once again, it seems that the ‘hand of God’ was on us because, if we had left at the normal time, we would have been walking up the street which was bombed.
My grandfather used to stand at the front door, listening to them overhead until the night they hit the local hospital and Bitton Street. The blast from the bombs blew him along the passage, back into the house and the fright he got was enough to stop him doing it again!

When indoor shelters were issued we put ours in the back room of the house. Because I would not get out of bed at night when the air raid sirens sounded, I was made to sleep in it instead of sleeping in my bed!

Another incident I remember is the evening we were playing rounders in Stanley street, which was the street by the side of our house when, all of a sudden, we saw a German plane coming towards us machine gunning away. I ran into the nearest house and hid under the table. All the windows in our house were broken by the blast of falling bombs. My mother and grandmother were outside sweeping up the glass when an Air Raid Warden yelled at them to ‘Get indoors you stupid women, there is an unexploded bomb across the road’.

We had to leave the area and stayed overnight with my Aunt Kit and Uncle Fred while a bomb which hadn’t exploded was defused and the windows in our house repaired. We then spent a magic two weeks on a farm at East Prawle which was very close to where my father was stationed.

The last 'tip and run' raid I remember and the one I remember most clearly was one lovely summer evening. My dad and granddad took my brothers and me on the river and we were on an island in the middle of the river called Salty. This was opposite the docks at Teignmouth. I remember hearing a plane and, looking up towards the mouth of the river, I saw this dark plane with two bombs falling from it. I turned to my brother Derek, and said ‘Look at that’. I saw the bombs fall and hit one of the houses in Bitton Terrace and the house shattered into the air. The next thing I knew my dad was throwing all of us into the bottom of the boat and covering us with his body. The debris was falling all around us. However, my granddad was still standing in the boat, shaking his fist and swearing at the plane!

Plymouth is about 45 miles away and one evening we all walked across the harbour to see the sky above Shaldon, the village opposite Teignmouth, glowing bright red. That glow was Plymouth, burning during an air raid.

Although the war years were often very frightening I did have a very happy childhood. The funny thing is that, despite the terror of the bombing the two things I never remember feeling during those years were cold and hungry.

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