大象传媒

I remember reading books down in the school shelters during raids. There was electric lighting in our school shelter and I remember Black Beauty, Gulliver's Travels and so on. I am recording this story at my old school's Open Weekend on July 3rd, 2005, - wartime pupils have been invited back - and it is strange seeing the same shelter again now. I didn't realise until I heard it on 大象传媒 Southern Counties radio yesterday, that there are actually about 100 metres of tunnels down there. I only have recollections of going in a few feet and sitting down; we were all designated a set seat. As I said, I remember reading books, and I do remember the paintings on the wall although I'm not too sure what they were, or what they were about. It must have been pretty crowded down there, sitting on benches on both sides. I don't recall having lessons but we probably had some talks given by the teachers. We wouldn't spend too long down there each time - 1 suppose about half an hour was about average if it was a false alarm but longer if it was a real raid. We'd get the warning and all troop down to the shelter, and of course in some cases it was a false alarm. You might just get down there, and then you'd be up again back to the classroom only to be called back down again with the next warning!

People don't realise how much of our schooling we lost though all this. I used to work in a factory in Crawley, and would get talking to some of the younger generation and they would say, 'Well, why haven't you got any qualifications? Why haven't you got any GCSEs?' We'd never heard of those in my day, and education was split because of the rushing down to the air raid shelters, and later lessons came to a standstill when so many were evacuated.

I was evacuated along with my brother to my grandmother's in Cambridgeshire. The first time was in 1940 and we went there for three months and we didn't go to school. In 1942 we went again for six months and this time we did go to school. The difference was that the local children maintained their classes, but the evacuees in the area were all lumped together in a hall and we weren't taught much at all. It was a case of reading, and some talks about things, but we were all different ages and you just lost your education.

I've got no bad memories of the war though, although I did get shot at by enemy aircraft once. My cousin and I were walking home from school crossing the London-Brighton railway line at Earlswood Station and we saw this plane coming across. Naturally we realised it was a German plane and we dived over a little brick wall with a privet hedge behind it and lay there for a while, and he shot right up the middle of the road. I've got no bad feelings about it though.

I got bombed out by a doodlebug that came down. I think it was in June 1944. The house was damaged, but not blasted completely. The windows and doors were all blasted out though. Houses a few doors away were flattened but even that wasn't a bad memory. I remember being in a cupboard under the stairs with my brother, my two cousins, my aunt and my mother, and the blast just took your breath away. You had to fight for breath for a few seconds.

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