大象传媒

I lived in West London and was at school when war broke out. For a time schools were closed but small classes were held in parents鈥� houses with a teacher visiting each small group to do some teaching and setting homework. This ended after a time and normal lessons were resumed in the school buildings.

We were outside the evacuation area but my youngest brother gained a place at Regent鈥檚 Street Polytechnic and was sent to Somerset where that school had been evacuated to Minehead. He lived at Dunster.

My father and I dug a hole in the back garden and erected the Anderson shelter, covering it with the dug out soil. There were four bunks. We spent many nights sleeping there in the height of the raids. We often saw the red night skies from the fires in Central London.

My father, with the other men in the road, was on the rota for fire watching and would spend one or two nights each week on duty.

I rode a cycle to school. I remember one morning, in a London fog, hearing the sounds of a doodle-bug. Then the engine cut out. This was very frightening because I could not see it due to the fog, so did not know where it was going to land. When the explosion came shortly afterwards, I was safe.

Some of the school staff organised 鈥渉arvest camps鈥� during the last weeks of the summer holiday when volunteer boys from the fourth, fifth and sixth forms when into the country to help the farmers with the harvest.

Our first camp was at Hambleden, Buckinghamshire and the next two at Froxfield Green, Hampshire. We were hired out to the farmers in the area. We stood sheaves up onto stooks as the corn was cut, loaded onto carts when dry and did any other unskilled work the farmer needed doing to release the men that he did have for the skilled work.

At Hambleden we slept in the village school and had our meals in the village hall. At Froxfield we used just the village hall. We had students from Domestic Science colleges to do the catering.

Those of us in the sixth-form were invited to join the fire-watching rota.

Exercise books were provided by the school to each pupil. Because of the shortage of paper you were not allowed to leave any empty lines. Each book would be inspected closely before a new one would be issued.

------------------------
This story was contributed by Solihull Heritage & Local Studies Service, Solihull Libraries by kind permission of the original contributor. It was originally contributed to Solihull Heritage & Local Studies Service's collection in 2005 (Ref: NC Solihull Historical: Reminiscences 2005/24).

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.