大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Gemma Hoare from The Folkestone School for Girls and has been added to the website on behalf of Joan Coleman with her permission and she fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I lived in Hertfordshire, a quiet county town, we only realised there was a war on because of the rationing and the blackouts, it wasn鈥檛 until later, when the blitz started in London that it became apparent. As we lived on a hill facing towards London, 25 miles away, we had a spectacular view of the searchlights, sometimes catching the plane with a beam. When the blitz started we saw the fires right across the skyline. We had very few bombs in Hertford one was in the middle of the town. There were various others but they landed outside the town in fields. During school we practiced evacuating the building and going to the dugouts and had to practice with our gas masks, putting them on and wearing them. It was quite good fun really as we missed lessons when the alarm went. Later on as I got older we performed fire duty in the school. We slept in the staff room on campbeds and accompanied one member of staff on patrol round the building. In the summer holidays, a couple of mistresses used to take several of us on to a farm to help weed a field of turnips and help with the stooking, which was amusing. Back at school we used to collect money for the armed forces. I made coconut-ice, took orders and sold it to everyone. Others knitted but some were a funny shape mind!

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