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This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Lucy, a pupil from Teversham Primary School on behalf of Tom Wakeling and has been added to the site with his permission. Tom Wakeling fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

My first memory was when I was 4 and a prisoner of war camp was built a quarter of a mile away from my house. The construction was barbed wire on posts to keep the prisoners in and wooden huts to house the prisoners. One night at around nine o’ clock lots of lorries, sixty or seventy, roared past our house full of Italian prisoners.
Another memory, in 1944, I remember lots of aeroplanes, hundreds, were pulling gliders - they were going to Anaheim, Holland and they were going to land these gliders on the other side of the river to cut off the German forces who were retreating to Germany. But it all went wrong because the Germans had tanks and big guns and defeated the British paratroopers, some were taken prisoners, some went back over the river and some were killed.
Evacuees came to our house - you were told they were coming and that was that. They didn’t like it because they came from London which was busy and noisy whereas our village was quiet and sleepy (like me, not!) I can’t remember any evacuees but I suppose they must have done. After a while they became unhappy and went back to London.
There weren’t a lot of bombs because we weren’t near any military camps but I do remember the V1 (A.K.A, doodlebug). It was so designed it would run out of fuel. I heard them and even saw them. Then there was the V2! They were rockets in the sense that they were fired indiscriminately and you couldn’t hear the engine, just a whistle, and just before it hit the ground, you heard the whistle, it was the rocket flying through the air.
I had a ration book and tea, sugar, meat, clothes, butter, powdered egg and milk were all rationed. Vegetables and fruit were not rationed, as you would grow everything you could! Food books were brown and clothes books were pink. You were registered with suppliers — you couldn’t go anywhere for food! There was also no imported fruit. We might have had two or three chickens and if someone in the village had a chicken you would get your eggs off them!
We made our social life, a lot of cowboys and Indians in the woods and football we just had a good time really — no homework given!
We had black out curtains and in the windows there was a cross of tape. I didn’t have a Father but my Aunty Kate was in the A.R.P — air raid precaution.
As the war went on, the prisoners of war were allowed out to help work with the farmers in the fields — the Germans were going to lose!
We used to have a gas mask drill at school, you got very hot and sweaty. When the air raid alarm sounded, everyone went in a straight into the purpose built brick shelters — far bigger than an Anderson shelter — you could fit my class and more inside. Then the all clear siren sounded and we all trooped back into the class room. There were Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse gas masks to make children more interested in wearing one. I didn’t have a Mickey Mouse one I had a traditional one.

If you could imagine it then the sky was absolutely filled with aeroplanes!

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