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This story was submitted to the People's War Site by Judy Kirsch, a volunteer from 大象传媒 London CSV on behalf of Louie Hammerton and has been addedto the siter with her permission. SHe fully understands the site's terms and conditions

The Bad and the good of World War 2.
I was 8 when the war broke out. At first we weren鈥檛 afraid because we didn鈥檛 understand. One day we were taken to school to be fitted with gas masks. Children under 8 got Mickey Mouse masks, but we had adult ones. The rubber smelt so terrible that we cried because we didn鈥檛 want them on. But we had to have them all the time in a box on a string. We never actually wore them at all.Thank God.

Where I lived we had an air force camp on one side of us and a large army camp next to it, and another big army camp at the back of us. We were caught in between with the bombs and the doodlebugs. My friend was one of the first to get killed in the shelter in his garden at home. It was hit by a bomb. On another time we were blown by the force of a bomb into our shelter.

We went into the shelters during school, and our lessons went on in there.

In 1944 I was evacuated to Northampton to a little village called Bugbrook. It was so peaceful you never knew there was a war on there. I was billeted with a lovely old couple in a beautiful thatched cottage and I had a bedroom of my own for the first time in my life.
The day before my 14th birthday I had to come home, because I would have had to pay full fare on thetrain once I turned 14. By then the bombing had stopped.

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