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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Lesley Carrick of the Norfolk Learning Partnership on behalf of Geoff Woolsey and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was ten when war started and we were living in Westcott near Dorking. I can vividly remember a landmine landing in our street. It demolished four homes and the families with them. I lost my best pal Gerald Blackmore. He could throw a cricket ball further than anyone. He was an evacuee from Dog Kennel Hill. There were several youngsters from my school who were evacuated, so we had half a day’s school and then in the afternoon we dug for victory or went for nature walks. If it was bad weather we all squashed into the village hall. I can remember all the staff at the school. Mr Earl was the Head, then there was Miss Venus the senior mistress. Mr Welsh, Miss Gore, Miss Cue, Miss Thomas and Miss Croft. I didn’t like school much. Miss Venus used to stand by me and make me eat all my vegetables — I still don’t like them. All the playing field was dug up to grow vegetables.

There was an air raid shelter in the grounds and we had to use it a lot as a classroom as there were a lot of daytime dogfights. A Dornier came down in the village — all the crew except the pilot got out. He tried to land it on the common, but managed to get it down safely between two houses. You could see that he tried not to crash into the houses. A big ammunition dump at Leith Hill got a direct hit, and kept the whole community awake for several days with explosions.

Two V1’s came down in the village in Milton Court grounds. We used to take Perspex from wreck windows and make rings and animals by burning shapes with a hot poker. You could make flat farm animals. There were Italian POWs at Cockley Cley, who made snake rings and bracelets for the kids.

There were quite a lot of Canadians billeted around Westcott, and they used to practice bombing in the local lake, which killed quite a lot of fish. I remember they had a black rhinoceros flash on their shoulders.

We had two evacuees billeted with us who were both very nervous — Bobby Swannel and Geoffry Pursloe. We used to play all sorts of games, such as Buzzball, where you got a tennis ball wet and threw it at each other. You were supposed to aim below the knee, but you didn’t. In another game, two of you joined hands and caught someone else. Eventually you ended up with a long line and someone hanging on for dear life at the end. Marbles and Five Stones were very popular. We also lined up five pebbles in a five of spades card shape against a wall, and tried to knock each one out of position in turn with a ball. Tip and run cricket, where you had to run whether you hit the ball or not, was played a lot.

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