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I was 16 when war was declared but in the school holiday prior to outbreak senior girls were asked to go into school to criss-cross the windows with bookbinding tape to prevent them shattering.

We had North London Collegiate School evacuated to us. Except for the sixth form, out pupils went to school in the mornings and they attended in the afternoons until they returned to London after a short while.

When the air raid sirens went, we older girls accompanied the young children into the underground shelters where we thought up games to keep them occupied.

In 1941 i went to Stockwell Training college for 2 years teacher training. the actual college was in Brommley but we were evacuated to Watcombe Park Holiday Fellowship Hostel near Torquay. Instead of having study bedrooms we shared rooms with 4 other students. Here the only evidence of war was when the germans off-loaded bambs on teir return journeys and one student received shrapnel wounds.

I returned to Luton in 1943 to teach in a secondary boys school and was there when bombs dropped near Vauxhall and Commer Cars.

I lived in The Mount, a block of flats ane the upstairs owners caome to shelter in our downstairs flat when the warning sounded. We had no Morrison or Anderson shelter.

I was at home when a bomb dropped on a ribbon factory, festooning the horse-chestnut trees with ribbons.

Otherwise I led a normal life, visiting the cinema in Luton, dancing, visiting London for shows, playing hockey and tennis and helping at youth clubs though I did a weekly fire watch right throughout the war.

My brother served in the airforce in Egypt, North Africa,Greece and Crete and my cousin survived Dunkirk as a militia boy. My fiance was in a reserved occupation in an aircraft factory and was a dispatch rider warden.

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