大象传媒

I was on holiday in Welwyn Garden City in late August 1939, with my mother, but when war seemed imminent she decided that we should really come back to Willington. We arrived in London on the night of September 2nd to a total blackout and had to make our way to King's Cross station where there was absolute chaos, with queues of troops and people waiting to board trains to get out of the city. I remembered being quite frightened and my mother trying to push to the front as if she was the only one with a child. We boarded the mail train and arrived home around 6 am the following morning with war being declared at 11 am. Air raid shelters were built in the school yard but I don't remember ever having to use them apart from practise drills. We were told that if the air raid siren sounded when we were on our way, to or from school, that we had to make our way to which ever was nearer, school or home. I'm sure that if this had ever happened the road home would have shortened quite dramatically. I can't say that I was ever frightened when the siren sounded, but we were very lucky here as we didn't see any action although the bombing of the coastal areas could be heard and sometimes felt.

Evacuees came from these coastal areas, arriving by train and assembling in the school yard with cardboard boxes containing their gas masks slung over their shoulders and a name tag pinned to their coats, the kind used to send parcels. Many children were soon taken back home but a few did stay.

There were various kinds of war efforts in order to raise money for the buying of amongst other things Spitfires and I can remember at one time a corvette was bought, its name HMS Clarkia. A memory I will always have is of a room at the Council School piled high with books when there was a drive to collect paper. Children brought books in and were rewarded with different coloured badges depending on how many they had collected. Full sets of encyclopaedias and beautifully leather-bound books of every description were sacrificed and probably parents were quite loathe to part with them.

Every so often we were measured at school, and any one over 5ft 3 ins was allowed extra clothing coupons. Even when you reached this height you still had to go through the same procedure each time. There were no street lights, no house lights visible and shop fronts were completely blacked out and it was quite common to see people finding their way home with the aid of a flashlight. Cars had to have their headlamps partially covered with just a small slit cut into the covering but of course during the 1940s cars were very few and far between, unlike today's volume of traffic.

The war years were not all doom and gloom and an awful lot of humour prevailed but there was a tremendous relief when it came to an end. People danced in the street and a huge bonfire was lit on the top of the pit heap which could be seen for miles around.

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