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Air-Raid Warnings

Schoolteachers incessantly rehearsed us to dive under school desks automatically at a sharp command. It was a necessary precaution, because our school playing field had as a boundary, a railway line. We were to use the routine frequently in our West London infant school. If there was time and the coast was clear we were shepherded ‘Don’t forget your gas-masks!’ into a large subterranean air-raid shelter. Its dank coldness was only partially alleviated by mugs of hot cocoa. I still cannot work out whether it was made in the shelter or beforehand in the school kitchen; was there always an urn of cocoa being heated just in case?
Every evening at home we slept, clad in siren suits, in the Anderson shelter partially submerged in the back garden. I remember our mother holding our hands tightly at the back door while she carefully inspected the skies and listened intently for any sign of air activity then, at a word, we raced to the shelter. Sometimes if we were late or the enemy was early, we waited for what seemed hours listening to the ‘crump’ of guns or the wavering drone of German planes followed by explosions as bombs found or missed their targets.
In the morning my brother and I would tour the streets collecting shrapnel, vying with each other for the largest piece or, if lucky, one still warm.
Out one day with a friend, ‘Moaning Minnie’ (air-raid warning) started up. Being quite a way from home, we started running but were grabbed by a man who pulled us into a community air-raid shelter. Against our wishes, because we were very worried that we would be in trouble for not going home and aware that our mothers would be worried about us, the grown-ups kept us there until the ‘all-clear’ sounded when we were released with the order ‘Go straight home and no dawdling mind’. The safety of the vulnerable was an obligation willingly shared by the whole population.

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