大象传媒

I was 12 years old and always reading the papers, and therfore had a good idea of what was going on regarding the lead up to the war. My sister and I always went to church on a Sunday morning and visited a relation after the service. While there we hearrd the 11 am announcement by Chamberlain.

As soon as that message finished, I grabbed my younger sister and ran home as we had visions of the planes coming immediately.

I was at Grammar school and very soon we had many evacuees locally. This meant that I could only go to school in the morning so that the evacuees could go to school in the afternoon. Some afternoons we played games and some they other places around Oxford where they could accomodate us for lessons, otherwise we went home. I remember our Botany lesson - we walked around the park doing the lesson!!

My father was now in the Auxilliary Fire Service.

The first night the sirens went in Oxford, there was just my mother, sister and I in the house as my father had to report to his post. We hastily got up, put on dressing gowns and slippers and went downstairs to a small internal room as I had been told it was the safest room in the house. For some reason or other I had this idea that when the bombs fell they would destroy all the water mains, so the first thing I did was to collect all the kettles and saucepans and fill them with water! I thought at least we would be able to make a cup of tea. At the time I didn't feel frightened as I was doing something. It was only after the all clear (another different sounding siren) that I started feeling frightened.

At 13 years, I joined St John's Ambulance Cadet corps.

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