Memories of School Days

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a Volunteer from Reading on behalf of Mr Tony Watts and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Watts fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

At school we had lots of practice air raids and some real ones. I remember the air raid shelter was underground with long bench seats down the sides and a toilet at the end that was covered with a bit of sacking. It always had a horrible dank earthy smell.

Around the end of the war there was a diphtheria epidemic and a girl in my class died from it.

We had regular visits with the school nurse to make sure we were healthy. She would scratch through our hair with a very sharp comb looking for nits and also fleas.

All the teachers in school were mostly women and we sat in class room and at the end of the lesson we simply changed our books and the same teacher would take us for all subjects.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.