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鈥淭his story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jan Hewett, a volunteer from 大象传媒 Three Counties Action at the Glen Miller Concert at Twin Woods on behalf of Sylvia Buckoke and has been added to this site with his/her permission. The person fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.鈥�

Sylvia Buckoke
Hemel Hemstead

Announcement of War

I was in school when the war started. We had Chamberlain on the radio. The local garage would charge the radio up with an accumulator. Even now I can hear Chamberlain saying 鈥� We are now at war鈥� An hour later this siren sounded. We children were terrified and rushed for our gas masks, which we had only just been issued with and trained on. You had to put your two thumbs in to stretch the rubber so it was a tight fit. They smelt dreadful. We waited breathless for everything to drop on us, but it was a false alarm.
We forgot about the war half the time. That is until the Germans started to bomb London. There was a total blackout, no lights. We would lie in bed my sister and I and watch the searchlights and the glow of London burning and hear the ack, ack, ack of the gunfire.
We often had stray bombs drop on Hemel. We often had our lessons in a shelter. We had to take newspapers with us because I was so cold and we could sit on the newspapers. You couldn鈥檛 learn much in a shelter it was so cold and damp and so we learnt singing.

Name: Sylvia Buckoke

Location: Hemel Hempstead.

Title: Shot up in the Playground.

This one day we were having a normal school day because the sirens hadn鈥檛 sounded and were in the playground. Just by chance we looked up and saw this plane. We could see the red crocs with black outlines. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a German plane,鈥� We cried. We were open mouthed. There were about a hundred of us in the playground, all children and we just couldn鈥檛 believe it because there had been no sirens warning. Then we saw the spats of dust as the gunfire hit the playground and we heard the staccato ack ack ack of the machine gun. We ran for the school in panic but we couldn鈥檛 all get through the door. There were steel bootscrapers by the door and
With everyone pushing to get through the door more children were injured by being trodden underfoot or injured against the bootscrapers than were shot. The pilot turned his plane and came back to have another go at strafing us.

Name : Sylvia Buckoke

Location: Hemel Hempstead

Title: White Teeth in the Blackout.

One night my friend and I were walking home. We were outside Salmons. That was the name of the shop. We stood there chatting about the evening. You know, girl鈥檚 talk, when we suddenly realized we were not alone. We didn鈥檛 see or hear anything but we knew we were being watched. We turned and saw two sets of white teeth smiling at us. We tore home. It frightened us at the time, as it was the first time we had seen black people, or rather just their teeth in the blackout. We saw lots of black troops around after that and we never had anything but courtesy from them.

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