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15 October 2014
WW2 - People's War

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The Scout Badge for Air Raid Shelters

by Norfolk Railway 1940s Weekend

Contributed byÌý
Norfolk Railway 1940s Weekend
People in story:Ìý
Jack Baston
Location of story:Ìý
Walthamstow
Background to story:Ìý
Civilian
Article ID:Ìý
A3036764
Contributed on:Ìý
23 September 2004

I was seven at the start of the war. My brother and I went to Kent to stay with an Aunt. We didn’t go to school as we were put to work on the land; hop picking, then fruit and potatoes. I remember seeing a unit of cavalry passing by once. They rode past with swords; just as they had finished the First war.

I moved back to Walthamstow at Christmas 1939 at the end of the phoney war. Because the school was short of teachers, we alternated going in the morning or the afternoon. We were also short of other things. Our exercise books were cut in half, and we had to use pencils until they were too short to fit in the sharpeners.

Following an incident in South London where a school had been hit, there was a rule that if you lived less than five minutes away, you ran home when the sirens went off. I remember one time diving behind a privet hedge to escape a Messerschmitt.

I was in the Scouts, and we used to help build Morrison shelters in peoples’ houses. After a certain number, I think it must have been about ten or twelve, you got a special National Service Badge to put on your uniform. I got mine, though don’t have it any more! In fact, a V2 landed on the Church and Scout Hut, and that was the end of my Scouting.

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