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This story has been submitted to the People's War site by a pupil from Swavesey Village College on behalf of Patricia and Percy Skidmore and has been added to the site with their permission. Patricia and Percy Skidmore fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

Patricia's story:
I was a child of 14 when the war broke out and living in London with my father. My father kept on telling me that there was going to be a war, and to me it was just something different. I went to a grammar school, but when they started evacuating people I decided that I wanted to leave. I didn't want to be evacuated . I wasn't given the option of what to do for a job, someone in my family found one for me, fitting carpets and sewing as an apprenticeship. The place I went to work was near St Paul's, but my father and I moved to Hampstead Heath. This was high up so we could look over the city and during the Blitz it was all ablaze. We could read newspapers by the firelight in the evening. I had to cycle past all the houses that had been wrecked by bombs when I was going to work. I went out in the evenings, I joined the GTC, which was like Girl Guides, but a bit more grown up. Everything about the war was fascinating. We young people just went out dancing or to the cinema like normal. The rationing was hard, we only had half a pound of sugar and an ounce of butter and I had to go out early in the morning to queue to buy sausages. I hated going down to the public shelters, during the raids, because although people were singing war songs, and things, every now and then, people who had been bombed were brought down. It was sad to see so many children crying for their mothers.
I decided I wanted to join the forces and I was stationed in Kent. I was a driver, driving anything that was needed. I earned 2 shillings a day, 14 shillings a week, but I sent most of it home. In 1943 to 1944 the place I was stationed turned into a supply depot for service men. We were one of the few places that knew when D-Day was going to be. It was weird because my best friend had her birthday on D-Day, but I wasn't allowed to tell her anything. She even bet me that it would be on her birthday, and I still had to pretend I didn't know!
We had Sundays off and I took the train up to London every week. It was a seven mile march there and I had to get up at 5 to catch the train.
I was driving my captain back to camp on VE day, when someone shouted out of the window that the war was over in Europe. I went down to the pub to celebrate with my captain, and I had a large orange juice. It was a very happy day!

Percy's story: I was 13 when the war broke out and soon local schools only taught for the mornings, and most of this was spent in the shelter. I wanted to be an engineer and passed my exams to go technical school. Unfortunately the air raids meant that there was a shortage of power and most of the tools didn't work. I got a job in an engineering firm as an apprentice and got 12 and sixpence a week. I got my degree from doing evening courses and eventually became a member of the Institute of Technical Engineering. I did a bit of ARP work during the war, as there was a small fire station in the village and was on duty during the first Doodlebug raid. It was very strange and we reported seeing fires falling from the sky. We soon worked out that when the humming from the doodlebugs stopped, the bomb was being dropped and there would soon be an explosion. We ended up putting up barrage balloons to stop them, as these stopped low flying planes. Luckily we were only 30 miles from the coast, so most went over us.
I was deferred from being a soldier during the war because I was doing important work in engineering, making gears for mechanical equipment used in the war. However, when it was all over, I still had to do National Service.

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