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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by CSV/´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Nottingham on behalf of Philip Everett with his permission. The Author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was 11 years old when War broke out and was excited by the prospect. However, my parents, who had lived through the 1st World War (my Father served in the Army then) were far more realistic and soon reminded me what War was really like.

Our school, High Pavement, was evacuated to Mansfield (all of 15 miles away!) where we shared school premises. My first foster home was an unhappy one, so I moved to a family who looked after me well and we became life long friends.

Returning to Nottingham, we shared school with the Manning school boys (then on Gregory Boulevard) in the afternoons and the girls in the mornings. The Girl’s Headmistress was a stern lady who didn’t believe in fraternisation. With the ingenuity of children we overcame this by leaving notes for the girls in their desks.

We returned to our own school on Stanley Road when air raid shelters had been built. We always hoped the sirens would sound the signal of an air raid during unpopular lessons so that we could go to the shelters, clutching our gas masks.

Most of our teachers were elderly — or seemed so! Or unfit for Military service so we took advantage whenever possible. However, on one occasion, we learned that a teacher’s son an RAF Pilot had been shot down and killed so we decided to be well behaved, no doubt to the teacher’s surprise.

I lived in Sherwood in a street of terraced houses with a great sense of community. When the sirens went we went down into our cellar joined by our nest door neighbour and her three children — one a baby in a clothesbasket! Her husband was in the Army and later a P.O.W. of the Japanese but survived the War.

Some bombs were dropped near our home, killing residents but luckily, not many. Possibly we were saved by the metal containers along the main roads, which emitted ‘smog’ like fumes.

After Dunkirk a bus pulled up in our street full of weary soldiers and everyone was asked to put them up for a while. As a child I wanted to help the War Effort and I wrote to the Lord Mayor, asking what I could do? As a result of this on Friday nights (pay day) I would collect a penny from each house on the street for the Red Cross. Hopefully this mounted up and provided some comforts for the troops. Also, we collected all the aluminium we could from saucepans etc and took it to a centre in the city to be used in the manufacture of Spitfires.

During the summer holidays from school we helped out of farms — beet singling, potato picking etc and were paid sixpence a day for this. Later at 16 years of age I was able to do fire watching duties at night.

Although there were food shortages and rationing, we managed as my father had an allotment garden near the High School Playing Fields. Also, my mother had never been used to having much money and so was thrifty and imaginative with food. I was perhaps more concerned with getting sweets which were rationed. It was also difficult to get comics. I was 17 when the War ended and a few months later was called up for National Service in the RAF which my older brother had joined during the War.

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