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Yes, I remember World War II.

I was seven years old when war broke out in September 1939. I still remember the day we heard the first air-raid siren. I remember thinking what an eerie sound it was.

I lived at that time in the small town of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, which is just 20 miles north of London, and this, coupled with the fact that we had the De Havilland Aircraft Company in our midst, made us a prime target for the German bombings.

Throughout the war we had a series of raids, and by the late summer of 1940, there had been several high explosive bombs and incendiary bombs dropped in the district. In October of that year, whilst we schoolchildren had spent almost the whole day in the air-raid shelter at school, the enemy succeded in bombing the De Havilland Aircraft Factory. I remember quite clearly a friend of mine, with whom I am still in touch, lost her father in that raid.

We had an Anderson shelter in our garden, and almost every night from then on there was an air raid, and my mother used to wake me up when the siren sounded and we would go off down to the Anderson shelter. We didn’t like it very much, as it was dark and cold down there, so after a while we took to getting under the bed in my mother’s room, and there we stay until the all-clear had sounded.

The heavy bombing continued throughout 1940 and 1941, in what was generally called the blitz, but in 1942 and 1943 these eased off a little. However in 1944 everything changed, with the arrival of the V1 and V11 flying bombs, or doodlebugs, as we called them. These rained down on us throughout the next two years, and I can remember as a child saying my prayers each evening when I went to bed, praying fervently that my Mum and Dad, my brother who was fighting in the army overseas, and myself would survive that night.

The bomb that most affected me personally was the one that fell on my school in the early hours of the morning on 10th October 1944. The school was the only secondary school in the town, and it was completely destroyed. Several people I knew were killed and seriously injured, and a boy in my class was blinded. This incident had a profound affect on all the schoolchildren of the area, as we were all split up and sent to different halls, rooms and temporary huts around the town. I was put in the Public Hall, which was a dance hall in the old part of the town, and I well remember that there were five classes in that hall. There was a teacher in each corner of the hall, with her class spread out before her, and there was a class on the stage. It took us all a long time to get used to ignoring the voices of the other teachers and just concentrating on our own. Did our education suffer? Of course it did. We had no equipment, no books, very little paper and precious little else. I remember I had my first French lesson the day before the bomb fell — I never had another. We were lucky to get any education at all in the circumstances, let alone learn French. I still haven’t learned French, and always blame Hitler for that!

After the end of the war our school was the first permanent building to be rebuilt in the country, and very grand it was, too. We had an essay competition within the school in which we had to write about ‘our new school’ and I won it.

So, with the end of the war, came all the street parties, and I went to most of them! I belonged to a song and dance group in the town, and we were invited to all the parties as part of the entertainment. I am still in touch with most of the members of that group, and we often laugh about those happy parties. We always seemed to manage to get a piano out on the street, and once we had music we were away.

Yes, I remember World War II — both the bad times, of which there were many, and the good times of which there were few, and I pray that my grandchildren will never know the horror of another war.

As related to Steve Lamb — Gateshead Council @ Blaydon

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