´óÏó´«Ã½

Shortly after the outbreak of war I resumed my junior schooling in N W London. We were issued with gas masks and carried out gas mask drills — mine always plunged me into an impenetrable fog! At home we dug up most of our back lawn to erect an Anderson Shelter made of sheets of corrugated iron. We discovered that water collected in the bottom and after a few days rain had more water in the shelter than we were allowed in the bath! In fact I spent many nights in my wellington boots sitting in the shelter hoping I would not have to use the stirrup pumps.
During the Battle of Britain I saw some dog fights in the vapour marked sky and on the early evening newspaper stands read the tally of enemy aircraft shot down. Later the Blitz began. At night we could see the sky ablaze with the fires in the London Docks and hear the pounding of the anti aircraft guns. In the morning on the way to school I would look out for pieces of shrapnel.
Having won a scholarship to a Grammar School I was evacuated with the school to Northampton where we shared the premises of the town’s Grammar School. Letters from home told of an incendiary bomb in the back garden and a landmine in the next street. During my time as an evacuee my mother managed to visit me for two short weekends.
As the situation in London became quieter the lower school returned to our own buildings in Kilburn. The doodlebugs (flying bombs) appeared and my father was a Post Warden, patrolling the pitch-dark streets. Sometimes with a borrowed steel helmet I would join him for a short while and occasionally we were treated to the sight of yellow and red flames spurting from the rear of a chugging doodlebug.
I cycled to school one summer morning to find the school had been damaged by a flying bomb. I remember clambering among the wreckage to find my desk and rescue some books. An immediate, indefinite holiday was declared and for the first time I fully appreciated the saying ‘its an ill wind….’. Lessons resumed in the autumn in a room at the Methodist Hall and the V2’s caused little inconvenience.
The end of the war in Europe prompted myself and friends to take the Tube to Trafalgar Square where we mingled with the vast crowds there and in the Mall, marking the end of an extraordinary period of our lives. Within a few weeks our School Certificate examinations would begin…

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