大象传媒

We practised lining up in the playground for a new sort of drill. Class by class we shuffled into the assembly hall to stand in orderly lines. Whistle signals told us when to stand and leave the imaginary bus or train. Just turned nine years old I thought this was a great game and much better than school lessons.

" Take notice of your teacher do as you are told and stay with your class, then you will be alright," my mother said. I couldn't understand why she was so serious. When we had to take empty bags and cases to school one day, I asked if we were going away. "Sort of. You are going with your school to the country to be kept safe incase a war starts," she said. My nightmare of being gassed was going to come true after all. That was why we had been trying on gas maks.

I was assured everything would be alright, yet here I was practicsing for evacuation. buses lined up outside the school and again we played the game of getting on them. That day I was given a letter to take home. How I got there I don't know, but there were but there were crowds of children and crying mothers milling the noisy, smoky railway station. I know I had a label pinned to my coat and one round my neck. What I do remember is that I was given a blue paper bag with a tin of condensed milk and a chocolate bar in it. It must have been another practise for I never got on a train and took my presents home.

We had recently moved from South West to South East London so that my father would be near his work in Deptford dockyards. At 11.20 am on 3rd september 1939, the first air raid came to London. World War Two had started and as sirens blasted their eerie warning, my mother and I were directed to shelter in a nearby timber yard. I crouched under long planks of wood hoping I wouldn't get splinters in my head. It was a sunny morning and I didn't want to die. School rumours said that we would all be killed in the first air raid. The All Clear sounded and I was still alive!

I didn't like my new school, which was very dark. We spent hours sitting on a wooden floor in the assembly hall singing popular tunes. I can still sing. "Any umbrellas" almost word perfect. Happily I soon told my teacher that I was leaving and going with my family to live in Snowdon.
"You are a lucky girl. You will see lots of hills and sheep", she said.

It as to be many weeks before I realised I had confused Snowdon with Swindon!

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