[PeterG]

I too was 9 at the time, I was then living in Leeds with the Anderson shelter already in our garden, shop windows were already covered in criss-crossed sticky tape. We already had our gas masks and I seem to remember that my mother had just bought me a round long gas mask tin to replace the standard issue cardboard box with cloth covering. I remember it was yellow with a green lid and I thought it was very swish. Shops were doing a roaring trade selling tin gas mask containers.

I remember listening to Chamberlain's speech and, shame to say, feeling very excited and exhilarated that I wasn't going to miss this war which seemed to me to be already as important as the Great War. I had some vague idea that there would be a long line of trenches along the Maginot Line and the Siegfried Line.

Almost immediately after the declaration of war ended the sirens went off quickly followed by the all clear. When I got to school the next morning things were pretty chaotic. I had only recently changed schools from St Joseph's, a Catholic school, to a non-denominational one as we had just moved house a few weeks earlier. But when I got to school nearly all the kids had been evacuated and the school was to close. I was transferred to another Catholic school, St Francis's in Holbeck, Leeds, near my grandmother's. There I got my first and last caning.

We were all assembled and after a roll call the Sister Superior said she would blow a whistle and that we were then to put on our gas masks. The whistle blew, we all put them on and they promptly steamed up. The whistle blew again and we took them off. The Sister Superior then called out two boys who had been seen fiddling with their masks in order to let air in to clear the mist. The two boys held out their hands and were caned with what I had assumed was the Sister Superior's cane walking stick rather than a normal school cane.

She then asked if anyone else had pulled away the side of their masks, she said God was watching and that if we had done so we should own up. I had done so and I put my hand up. Big mistake! I was called out in front, told to put my hands out and received three mighty whacks first on both palms then on both knuckles. So the first lesson I learnt in WW2 was keep your mouth shut. What really annoyed me was that even at nine I knew darned well that had there been a real gas attack I would never have pulled the side of the mask away, but trying to reason with her earned me the extra three whacks on my knuckles.