91热爆

Wartime School Days

My main memories were of my school days. I was 11 years old when we moved to Worcester Park from Westcliffe-on-Sea . I attended Stoneleigh East School for four years during the war. We did very few lessons but had a lot of fun in and out of the shelters. I do wonder if the air raid shelters were filled in.? They were over by Waverley Road and were underground. Many teachers were called up and we had quite elderly teachers compared with today鈥檚 age of teachers. We used to spend a lot of time playing in Cuddington Rec and watching the doodle bugs flying over because we knew if they passed us we were safe, provided we could hear the engines, once they cut out they fell to the ground. We left school at 14 and went straight out to work. Our house in Windsor road Worcester Park received a direct hit from a doodle bug in June 1943. The bottom five houses in Windsor Road were ruined and rebuilt about 1948. My mother, brother and myself had just gone away for a week鈥檚 holiday to Bournemouth and as we had no house to come back to I was told to get a job which I did. We were fitted out with clothes by the W.V.S in Bournemouth and we were very lucky because the Americans supplied them with most of their stock and not many people were bombed out in Bournemouth so we were well kitted out. My father rented a house and we all came back to Worcester Park.

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