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This story was submitted to the Peoples War Site by Stacy Blyth and Gemma Hoare from The Folkestone School for Girls and has been added to the website on behalf of Thelma Brown with her permission and she fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

On the 8th May 1942 I was travelling by bus with my two oldest sisters to St. Ethelbert’s Convent in Deal, the school was approximately three quarters of a mile from home. I was just six years old at the time and I remember the bus being stopped and we all had to go to the nearest air/raid shelter until the all-clear sounded. When it was considered safe we boarded the bus again and carried on to school — as we approached the school we were stopped again as a bomb had dropped on the playground — my eldest brother was already at school as he had gone by bicycle and we had no way of knowing if he was safe at that time, he was lucky has he had gone to the shelter but his cycle was badly damaged.

Unfortunately two boys had gone back to collect their marbles from the playground and were killed (Michael Ryan and James Rogan) and seven others were seriously injured.

After a couple of interruptions in our education due to the bomb damage at school etc, we eventually settled at a school nearest from which was considered safer than travelling by bus — by this time it was 1944. The school was a church hall called Glyn Vivian Miners’ mission, there was one teacher who taught us just maths and English but we could only attend half a day as it was a clinic in the afternoons. The morning was broken up half way when someone in the class went up to the local bakers and we could have a sticky bun for a halfpenny to go without milk. The teacher was called the Reverend Howard, very strict but could also be extremely kind. I eventually started the local primary school going all day when I was 9-10 years old, due to the Glyn Vivian Miners’ mission closing.

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