The siren sometimes went well to start with there were no shelters. The shelters were built later on in the playground but initially you just had to go underneath your desk and stay underneath your desk. That was what they thought was the safest place. It was the same at home before the shelters were built in our gardens. My mother just used to bed us down underneath the kitchen table. If anything came down that would have saved us.

Things happen Mrs McDonald spoke about her windows coming out you couldn’t have a light on without pulling down the blinds. Now when you pull down blinds the sides of the window are still clear you had to get black tape and had to it round this thing and we had our windows out 2 or 3 times and that black tape was terrible to come off and you had to replace it. They had people organised in the A.R.P and they went round and if you had one little bit of light (knocks on table) Warning second warning you were for it third warning you were fined. You weren’t allowed to show any light because that would give the German airman some idea where they were they could pick up a location if they saw lights so we didn’t get lights. If you came in at night you had to make sure the blinds were down before you put on a light. Now these A.R.P people patrolled the streets they saw that the windows were alright if there was an air raid they were there helping seeing if anyone was injured if anyone was in the rubble. They had to try and get those who were trapped. They were very very helpful and the police were there to help and the fire service were there because when incendiaries were dropped that caused fire. All these people worked together to save civilians who had been bombed.

First of all we had no shelters so we had to find a spot where we thought we would be alright and they weren’t of any use. We were all in places where we could have or the whole building could have come down and the shelters were the next thing to come along. They were horrible places cold and damp and miserable. Oh we didn’t like to go in but we had to.

Now there is something else I am going to bring out a silly thing just a torch but why was it important? Pupil answers “if you went into your shelter” Oh well yes we went into the shelter but we were only in there if there was an air raid. What did I say about the windows? They were blacked out. Well when we out to the streets there was no light we had no street lights. So a torch was a thing that you had in your pocket every night. You went out without a fear nobody would touch you. The moonlight nights were absolutely wonderful because we had light but there was fear because those were the nights “Gerry” thought he would come and visit us. He could see the building he could see where they were going to drop there bombs’ These were nights that were frightening but every night for 6 years in the winter time when we went out we took a torch so that was a very important thing for us.