大象传媒

I was due to start at my Secondary School (later to become a Grammar School) the Monday after war was declared, so this was delayed for a week. The "phoney war" period was quiet apart from drill signals (three rings on the Bell) when we had to leap from our desks and run several hundred yards down the road to the air-raid shelters which were reinforced Nissen huts buried in large mounds of earth on the edge of the football pitch. There drills became earnest when the Battle of Britain started and we had to try to ignore the dogfights overhead. Aerial activity was intense and I can remember sitting on my Grandmother's doorstep and watching an approaching squadron of Stukas escorted by ME 110s passing overhead and forming up to dive bomb Southampton, where they set the dockside margerine store on fire. The fire lasted for three days, sending an enormous column of black smoke high into the sky. On another day I came out of school to see a squadron of JU86s retiring southwards at no more than 3000 feet. Four of them were on fire, and shortly after a lone Hurricane did a victory roll over the town. Some amusement came from the sight of a man appearing at the door of the barber's shop across the road with a white sheet round his shoulders and lather all over his face, looking to see the source of all the racket.

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