On September 3, 1939, I was six years old and coming up to seven at the end of the following month. I was an only child, and was born on October 30, 1932, to John Westmacott ("Jack") and Doris Louisa Mason. My home was in Lewes; originally at Chandos, Rotten Row and then, from May 1937, at 9 Highdown Road - a new semi-detached house on the Nevill Estate on the edge of the South Downs.
I went to school from just after my fifth birthday. I attended Leicester House Preparatory School which, in those years, was in St Anne's Crescent. In the summer of 1940, my mother and I went to live with her parents in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire and we came home at the end of October that year - on my eighth birthday. I lived at home in Lewes throughout the War, with the exception of that period of about four months. I gained a place at the County Grammar School for Boys, in Mountfield Road, and started there in 1942. I was twelve on VE Day, and stayed at the Grammar School until the end of 1949.
These are the bare bones of my wartime experiences. I have many more detailed and, I hope, accurate memories, which I weould like to share with readers in my next articles.
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