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15 October 2014
WW2 - People's War

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Reminiscences - from School Books to Service Life

by CSV Solent

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Contributed by听
CSV Solent
People in story:听
David Bussell
Location of story:听
Portsmouth, Hampshire
Article ID:听
A4152052
Contributed on:听
04 June 2005

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV Solent on behalf of David Bussell and has been added to this site with his permission. David Bussell fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

In 1939 at the start of the war, I was a nine year old schoolboy living in Portsmouth. My school was located in a three-storey Victorian house in Southsea and initially the cellar was strengthened and sandbagged to become an air raid shelter. This was eventually replaced by a brick structure at the end of the rear garden.

One of my most vivid memories at this time was of four planes flying over the city late in the afternoon and not realising it was an attack until the sirens sounded and anti-aircraft fire started. It was only a small raid aimed at the dockyard but hitting the residential area, including a cinema with some loss of life.

Things changed slowly; rationing of food, non-existence of exotic fruits, oranges and bananas, and curtailment of sweets.

Metal was collected, railing from private houses and city parks, old unwanted aluminium saucepans, all went for the war effort.

Additional air defences were created: large static water tanks were placed in the streets to help extinguish incendiary attacks in case high-explosive bombs had disrupted the mains water supply, and barrage balloons, to deter dive-bombing aircraft, were sited in any open usable space, city parks or school playgrounds, where the pupils had been evacuated.

Another deterrent was mobile oil burners that generated black smoke to obscure possible targets.

As air raids became more pesistent, an Anderson shelter was put into the rear garden where I lived. This was a pit in the ground with a corrugated iron structure, covered with the earth from the pit, which would accommodate four adults. This was a change from the previous precaution of taking refuge under the staircase, thought to be the safest place in the house.

As a member of a boy scout troop I undertook various activities, one of which was to collect waste cardboard from retail shops, using a trek cart, and delivering to a central point. I can recall one such duty collecting a large quantity of stick-of-rock (a popular seaside confection) cartons, no longer required because of non-manufacture of the rock.

Summer 1944 saw the aftermath of the Normandy landings, with troops who had been held in woodland to the north of the city, passing though to embark for France.

Early in 1945, three months before the war ended, I enlisted in the army and, as a fourteen year old, was sent to an army apprentice school in Yorkshire. We were accommodated in barracks built before the Great War and condemned many years ago but brought into service for the large numbers of trainees the armed forces required!

Looking back over sixty years, most memorable to me are: carrying a gas mask, the smell of derelict, bombed buildings and stirrup pumps and buckets of sand and water in public places.

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