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My name is Mr E.A. Street and during the war years I lived opposite St Andrews School in Clifton Road, Worthing. The youngest of six sons, I am positive that three of my brothers went to the school and feel that probably the two eldest attended the school I attended from 1939 until the spring of 1942. The Headmaster was a Mr Parritt, he and the teachers were strict on discipline, but fair and took an interest in the welfare of their pupils. I recall when lads came to the school with their shoes and socks wet through Mr Parritt made sure they had dry socks on while theirs were being dried.

The other teachers were a Mr Palmer, Mr Gilpin, Mr Elmore and Mr Dolman. A Mr Cressy and a Mr Miles had left prior to me joining the school, I believe to join the forces. There was also a Miss Ward and another lady teacher who joined the staff a little later.

We only attended class mornings for one week and the afternoons for the next. The evacuees from London used the classrooms in the free periods. The periods out of the classrooms were spent in the Hall, walking, gardening etc. I do not recall picking peas at the nursery however. We were told to bring a garden tool to school, which seems to have been rakes, hoes and builders shovels, we were then marched in groups to the West Tarring school site and were set to clearing the ground there and making the area into allotments. The resulting produce was sold to us at a reasonable price. We could go to the allotments at out of school hours under the watchful eye of a master.

I would bring two incidents to your attention. Firstly, the school were given a set of encyclopaedias, which were kept in a locked cupboard in the hall. They were available for use on request. As I lived opposite I would often go over to the school to peruse these books. On one occasion I left the school to go home for dinner, as I did so, I heard the sound of aircraft. I looked down Clifton Road i.e. northwards and saw two aircraft coming towards me at rooftop level. The fist a German, I believe it was a Heinkel, followed by a Spitfire. As the Heinkel flew in front of me the person in the right hand seat of the cockpit slowly waved to me. The Spitfire Pilot did the same. I watched them fly south and out of sight. Looking north and south I could not see anyone in the road, possibly because it was dinner time. I ran indoors and told my mother then went back outside into the road, I still saw no-one whatsoever. Before I had run into my home I thought I heard gunfire in the far distance but no-one else seemed to have witnessed the incident.

The second incident was when I was in the Odeon Cinema, it was packed, as usual. There was a tremendous bang and people started rushing to the aisles to get out. A soldier in the rear seat stood up and shouted ‘For chr sake sit down I cannot see the bloody film’ and people did just that. There then began an orderly exit. Montague Street was strewn with broken glass. Two policemen were keeping people moving and away from broken shop windows. It transpired a Lancaster Bomber with a full bomb load had crashed off of Worthing. That soldiers action, in my view, prevented a major panic thereby saving people from injury or worse.

I have never heard these two incidents mentioned, and have only in the last few years mentioned them. Just two incidents in a long war,I am sure many people in their seventies have similar memories.

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