A young boy in WW2

I remember when the war started and everybody saying it would all be over in six months.The sirens used sound every day and we used to stand in the garden looking up at white circles and lines in the sky where the RAF was chasing German reconnaisance planes.Again people said thats all they can do.
We always knew when the German planes were on their way and were able to get ready to go down the Anderson shelter in plenty of time before the sirens went off because the dogs would start barking .They could hear the distant sirens long before our warnings went off.
I will never forget the first day the bombs fell.My father was away in the army.My mother and I and my 2 yr old brother had retired to the shelter and I heard the drone of the out of phase German boombers.
Suddenly the air was just completely filled with the loud whistling noise of falling bombs followed by explosion after explosion.
My Mother started screaming at the top of her voice and screamed and screamed and screamed.I was 8 yrs old and I felt funny in my stomach but I didn't know what to do and I remember sitting on one side of the bed just looking at her.
I was evacuated 5 times returning on two occasions early on when I was mistreated by the host.On the first occasion I was unhappy because the husband kicked me because I wouln't eat the parsnips he grew in the garden.they made me feel sick.I only told my father in the train on the way home.
Then I was evacuated to live in the vicarage in Brixham.At first my brother and I ate with the family but it soon became evident that we didn't have the manners for the that exalted vicar and we were consigned to eat with the servants downstairs.At some time I 'misbehaved'and the vicar requested his son to take me to my room and thrash me.He did this with cold efficiency and when he left me I
will never forget the utter dispair and lonliness I felt,I have never felt any thing so utterly soul destroying in the whole rest of my life.For me later in life this epitomised the hypocracy of religion and the Church.
After that I went to Stratford on Avon with my mother and brother.We lived on a farm and it was a happy time fishing for sticklebacks ,skating on frozen ponds,picking mushrooms to sell in the market and learning to milk cows in the morning.
It was here I passed my 11 plus and gained entry to Colfe's Grammar School of Lewisham SE London,but the the school was evacuated to Skinners School in Tunbridge Wells and that is where I started my secondary education.
THe playpround looked out over the weald of Kent and I remember on one occasion at play time we all stood and watched as 3 spitfires chased a doodlebug across the sky.

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