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I was at school during the war years of 1939 — 1945, travelling daily by bus between Newport and Sandown. We often saw the results of overnight air raids as we passed damaged homes and rescue workers still digging people out from the rubble. Daylight raids were frequent and lessons would be interrupted constantly. We had to run to a spare patch of ground where there were two long underground shelters for the girls. (The boys had to make do with surface brick built shelters) Unfortunately, all too often our underground shelters would be flooded and we would have to stand on the wooden seats to keep up out of the water round our feet. Sometimes the emergency lighting would fail as well, which meant being in the dark too. Not very pleasant ! There was a chemical toilet at one end. We never knew how long we would be in there of course and with probably 70 youngsters to a shelter …….
Our school bus was used for an experiment in petrol saving too: there was a strange contraption hooked on to the back of the bus which has a sort of coke stove on wheels built on it. Sometimes the driver of the bus would have to get off and stoke up this contraption to get enough power to get us up Lake Hill.
The Island was full of troops and ammunition stores, with vast amounts of petrol stored too. The beaches were barricaded, with anti-landing craft barriers erected all along on the sand. Some of the roads were blocked by “dragon’s teeth” -
Large round concrete blocks, about 3ft in diameter and maybe 5ft high, set in staggered rows across the width of the road. I remember one particular set at the junction of Carisbrooke Road and Trafalgar Road in Newport. There was also a concrete “pill-box” set on the Mall at the same junction. Invasion was anticipated daily as the war was going so badly, with the evacuation from Dunkirk etc. Some of the pill-boxes can still be found around the Island.
There were large static water tanks built in some streets too, as emergency water supplies for firefighting. They were large enough to swim in so had to be covered with mesh to stop the kids !
The Government issued Anderson shelters (corrugated iron sheets to be dug into peoples’ back gardens) and later, steel table shelters for indoors. They were about 8ft long and 6ft wide with mesh removable sides, and a heavy steel top. My father refused to let us have these. He always insisted that the safest place was under the stairs where we had a cupboard. So our shelter was two floorboards balanced on old square, empty biscuit tins. Not exactly the Ritz! Sometimes there wouldn’t be much room, and my Mother would finish up sitting on the gas meter … she used to say that if the house was blown up she’d travel faster than the rest of us !

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