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I was born and lived in Leicester until 1954. I was seven years old in 1939, in the September I started in the juniors at the local school. I can remember a large classroom, the classes were big then, we each had our own wooden desk, with an opening lid – ink wells even ink monitors!! We all had a gas mask which had to be taken to school. Practising in case of an air raid, we sat on the floor under our desks, wearing our gas masks. No-one liked wearing the gas masks as the eye pieces steamed up and you couldn’t see properly. The windows in the classroom were small pane with sticky paper strips all over them, in case they broke if a bomb was dropped nearby.

So our teacher made up a little song to the tune of “Little Brown Jug” that we all sang wearing our gas masks, I suppose it was to get us used to wearing them.

The song:
“Ha ha hee hee little gas mask how I love thee,
ha ha hee hee my little gas mask and me”
Can you imagine the noise of over forty-five seven year olds singing while wearing gas masks.

Happy days for a child even with a war happening.

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