大象传媒

Having spent 6 months as an evacuee in Reading I was awarded a Technical Scholarship at the Wandsworth Junior Technical School which had been evacuated to Guildford and was sharing the premises of the Guildford Technical College so in April 1940 I joined them.

I was billeted with the same family for the 3 years of my course firstly with the head of the family and later with one of their daughters and her husband. Whilst they did not treat me badly I never felt really at home, as I had in Reading, they were a working class family similar to ours but I was uneasy with their general conduct and demeanour towards others an attitude that was foreign to me.

Whilst I was there Guildford escaped any serious bombing, of the few bombs that were dropped most fell on open land but seemed to cause more fear amongst the inhabitants than I ever felt at home, for despite the obvious dangers we often went home at weekends. In the winter we travelled by train, in the summer we cycled leaving directly after school on Friday and returning on Sunday. On one occasion we had just left Guildford when a lorry driver recognised our Wandsworth school caps and gave us a lift home.

The uncompleted Cathedral on Stag Hill was surrounded with scaffolding, which some of us were caught climbing it for a dare after which it was made strictly out of bounds. It seemed that the Cathedral was used as a land mark by German airmen - we could tell from the direction they flew on wether London or the Midlands was to be the target. One vivid memory was seeing and hearing the Stuka dive bombers when they made a daylight raid on Vickers at Weybridge when many workers were killed.

On completion of my school course I returned home to Wandsworth in April 1943.

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