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My memory of the beginning of the War is of collecting our gas masks from Squarey’s Yard (the outbuildings of Belvedere House). We did it alphabetically - everyone from A to F, say, and we were all fitted for different sizes. I remember the air raid shelters behind the school too — in School Field, that is now the Rec. I remember being in there for a whole day once — there were buckets behind sacking half way along and a very strong small of creosote. There was an ack ack gun and searchlights on the cricket field and the little building that was built as the officers mess became the cricket pavilion after the war.

. I remember I was selling draw tickets in Gramshaw Road when they strafed the engine sheds — when the bomb went off I went and hid under the stairs. And I was on the top deck of a bus in town when the fighter planes came over with the guns firing — you could see them blazing. Then when I got back home to Bemerton there was lots of excitement because they had dropped a bomb which had bounced on the rail, gone through a wall and ended up in the allotments. Shrapnel had hit the water tank and there was water everywhere.
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