大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Marie on behalf of Audrey and has been added to the site with her permission. Audrey fully understand the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was 13 years old and had started the autumn term at a new school - Cedar house School, St Neots. It was lovely weather I remember and one night I drew back the black out curtains in our dormitory and gazed at the moon. I said to the other girls 鈥淒o come and look at the moon, it鈥檚 beautiful鈥� It was a full moon, and red. My friend Belinda (Bindy) said 鈥� a red moon - that鈥檚 a sign of war and bloodshed!鈥� We looked at each other and no-one said a word. I have never seen another moon like that again.

Cedar House School was a girls private boarding school when I first went there and there were only 40 boarders. But before long the numbers crept up to 140 and some of us had to billeted with families in the town as so many more girls arrived from London.

Most of the London girls were bright and intelligent and brought with them an air of fun and sophistication - at least that鈥檚 how it seemed to me - the rest mainly farmer鈥檚 daughters seemed like a bunch of country bumpkins - but we soon livened up!
But life was not too bad for us鈥�.whenever the siren went at night to let us know that there were enemy planes about we had a special drill. We put on our dressing gowns or siren suits, took our gas masks and torches etc and trooped down to the cellar. We all had to have our own masks with us at all times They were issued to us in a square cardboard box with a piece of string attached so that you could slip it over your shoulder, really awkward things, and thank God I never had to use it. I was in charge of the youngest boarders who were in a large dormitory next to the dining room on the ground floor. I saw that they were all right and guided them down the cellar steps clutching their favourite teddies and their gas masks. Then the rest of us formed an orderly queue and followed. It was really rather fun and we enjoyed it. There were cushions and blankets and we had cocoa and biscuits and piles of magazines - mainly about movie stars. I remember one was called 鈥淭he Picture Goer鈥� although I can鈥檛 remember the others. I don鈥檛 know where they came from but they kept us amused, and sometimes we had a sing-song while we stayed down there until the all-clear sounded and we could go back to bed.

The school doctor said that after we鈥檇 been up for hours during the night we needed to rest during the day so lessons would be shorter and we spent much of the day sunbathing on the lawn, often in our swimsuits. That was summer 1940. I seem to remember it being lovely weather all the time - and when it did rain it rained at night and was sunny during the day.

One day during morning lessons we suddenly heard the yat-tat-tat of machine gun fire. I leapt from my desk and ran out into the quad where I watched a dramatic scene. One of our Hawker hurricane fighters was chasing a German Dornier - white smoke trailed across the blue sky. The Dornier finally crashed to the ground with a tremendous explosion and a column of black smoke. When I returned to the classroom I found everyone, including the teacher, lying flat on the floor under the desks!

Someone had got us in touch with a girl鈥檚 school in the USA and we corresponded with them. It seemed they all had terrific social lives - they were always having parties and barn dances, out door games and picnics, boyfriends and dates. We just could not compete - sitting around our gas fire in our common room with our knitting! (We were encouraged to do this for the troops) I didn鈥檛 know what to write to my correspondent - Marg Schultz - so I started fantasizing. I wrote that my boyfriend who was in the RAF was flying out to Monte Carlo next weekend and taking me. Sometimes we went to Paris, and wonderful balls in London or Paris. I described my fantastic ball-gowns, candlelight dinners and champagne (which I鈥檇 never actually tasted!) Marg finally gave up the correspondence. It had never occurred to me that they may really have wanted to know what it was like living in War-Time Britain - oh well! Rations, black-outs, restrictions on everything, gas masks, air raids, shelters, evacuations, queues. Could I have made all of that sound interesting? I guess I could have!

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