I was born in Bedford in 1931 and so was 8 when the war began - old enough to be excited by it without understanding enough to be worried about what was going on. Thinking back to those days I have only recently begun to realise how deeply I was affected by growing up during the war. I started at Bedford Modern School in 1942 and St. Paul's school from London was evacuated to Bedford and shared our school buildings. We went to school in the mornings and they went in the afternoons.