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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Margaret Waddy of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Cambridgeshire Story Gatherer Team on behalf of Pamela Jacqueline Saville and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was 11 when the war started. I went to the County School; we lived at the city end of Mill Road.

It was a toss-up whether the County School would stay. The new school was being built at Long Road and the rumour was that the County would be used for servicemen. But that didn’t happen.

When I was 12, Long Road opened and I got a bicycle to go there. That winter it was very cold — it was horrible. But on my 17th birthday I got my driving licence, so I could drive to school.

The underground cloakrooms in the school were used as the air raid shelters. We carried our gas masks everywhere.

Our house was near Fenner’s Cricket Ground. There was a bombing raid on the area; our house lost a window. It was always said that the German bombers had been told to look out for the Newmarket Road cemetery and Marshalls, but the pilot spotted the white Mill Road cemetery gravestones and dropped the bombs there. Opposite our house was Freeman Hardy and Willis’s shop; all the glass and shoes fell out. As dawn broke, people were grabbing shoes, trying to pair them up. Most shops lost their glass. We just carried on cycling to school.

That was the bombing part of the war.

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