大象传媒

This story was added by Olivia Cubberley at the 大象传媒 Open Centre in Hull with the kind permission of Mr P Butler.

I was 10 years of age when WW2 was declared. The entrance exam to Chiswick County School was cancelled so, unfortunately I did not have a grammar school education. Neither was I evacuated to Amersham, where most of my school friends went, as did some of our school teachers. Consequently, the junior and senior schools of Brentford closed . We kids had to find our own daily amusements for 6 months until the schools re-opened - No city raids occurred, because of this being the 'phoney war'.

Because of a shortage of teachers, for some had been called up for service, the classrooms were crowded (there were more than 42 boys in my class). The standard of teaching was not high; the war atmosphere creating reluctance, more so, when daylight bombing started and we pupils were guided down to the concrete slabbed air-raid shelters, that had been constructed on part of the playing field at the beginning of the war. When Night bombing started, the sirens hardly sounded during the day, so no interruption of lessons until the V1's started dropping on London, in a new form of aerial attack. Then we were guided to the shelters again, during the school attendance periods. No bombs or doodlebugs dropped on the Brentford Senior School.

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