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When the war started I was a little girl aged three, but can recall when at school ,if the siren sounded all the classes would assemble in the main hall, here the headmistress would open a trap door in the floor. There was a flight of wooden steps where temporary classrooms were partitioned off, one boy would sit at the top of the stairs listening for the all-clear, this meant we could either go back to our classrooms or out to play depending on what time it was.
I remember one Sunday on returning from a visit to an Aunty, the siren went off so a home-guard guided us to the nearest shelter, here the steps were stone that led under the street , where hundreds of people were all in different rooms,with electric lights, radios, beds, young and old some had brought their pets with them. This time when we emerged a bomb had blown most of the street and people were crying and searching for their loved ones in the rubble, seeing this we hurried towards our streets praying ours were still standing.
This time was very frightening to me as a child and years later when ever I heard a factory siren go off the memories would come flooding back.

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