My parents decided to send me to a boarding school as my father was in the navy, and to stay at the same day school was not possible as my mother went to where he was sent, eg, Malta and various other ports.
The school was a convent outside Torquay, and I went aged eleven. I was very happy there and was not homesick for one minute, and made many good friends, a few I still have.
At thirteen the war broke out, which cast a shadow on my life as I worried about my father at sea in the Atlantic, and especially listening to the wireless and hearing the dreaded words (the Admiralty regrets) and then breathing with relief when his ship was not mentioned.
We seemed to be fairly free from air-raids, though occasionally the siren would go and we'd traipse down to the shelters. I regret to say while the good nuns said the Rosary, we would tell ghost stories and frighten ourselves to death!
Though one scaring time was being in the middle of the hockey pitch and having to throw oneself to the ground as a German fighter plane suddenly appeard out of the blue and started to machine-gun us. Luckily he was not a very good shot, though I'm afraid he killed some people in the nearby village.
The only other time I was too close for comfort to a German plane was being alone in a classroom high-up in the school and hearing a plane engine, and looking out of the window and seeing the plane discharging its bombs. Unfortunately a hotel just down a country road from us which had been turned into a hospital received a direct hit and caused many casualties.
Little did I know that one day I would have a German son-in-law!
I wonder what his grandfather did in that war?!
Polly
The school was a convent outside Torquay, and I went aged eleven. I was very happy there and was not homesick for one minute, and made many good friends, a few I still have.
At thirteen the war broke out, which cast a shadow on my life as I worried about my father at sea in the Atlantic, and especially listening to the wireless and hearing the dreaded words (the Admiralty regrets) and then breathing with relief when his ship was not mentioned.
We seemed to be fairly free from air-raids, though occasionally the siren would go and we'd traipse down to the shelters. I regret to say while the good nuns said the Rosary, we would tell ghost stories and frighten ourselves to death!
Though one scaring time was being in the middle of the hockey pitch and having to throw oneself to the ground as a German fighter plane suddenly appeard out of the blue and started to machine-gun us. Luckily he was not a very good shot, though I'm afraid he killed some people in the nearby village.
The only other time I was too close for comfort to a German plane was being alone in a classroom high-up in the school and hearing a plane engine, and looking out of the window and seeing the plane discharging its bombs. Unfortunately a hotel just down a country road from us which had been turned into a hospital received a direct hit and caused many casualties.
Little did I know that one day I would have a German son-in-law!
I wonder what his grandfather did in that war?!
Polly
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