When the war began I was a fourteen year old schoolboy. The year before, my father had evacuated my mother and I in anticipation of air raids on London but the Munich appeasement deferred war until the next year. My school, the City of London School, evacuated to Marlborough just before war was declared on September the third, 1939 and I heard the declaration by the then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, sitting in the living room of the people to whom I had been evacuated.
I had been a keen collector of aviation cigarette cards and all I could think of was flying. I left school in 1941 and started work in a bank - Barclays Bank Dominion, Colonial and Overseas, 29 Gracechurch Street, London - but as soon as I was old enough I voluntered for pilot training in the RAF.
I will tell that story later, but I was not demobilised until 1948 when I returned to banking. I have been working overseas ever since and now live partly in Trinidad, in the West Indies, and partly in London.
My Mother was a remarkable woman who left thirty volumes of handwritten diaries, part of which covers her wartime experiences as a housewife and this may also provide material for contribution.
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