One day this summer, the Year five and Year 6 classes from Westdale Junior School travelled back in time to September 1939: it became the day we were evacuated.
All the children, teachers and adult helpers had their gas mask and a label on their coat. Most of the boys wore grey shorts and socks, a white shirt and a jumper. Some had braces and a cap. Most of the girls wore a cotton dress of a white blouse and grey skirt with a jumper on top. Lots of them had their hair done in pig-tails and ribbons.
We travelled from our school in Mapperley into Nottingham city centre by service bus. Then we walked to our distribution point, Nottingham Castle, carrying only one small suitcase, our gas mask and a packed lunch.
We were greeted by an American soldier, Sergeant Roady, and an air-raid warden. They explained that we were going to be there all day because we had to wait until more buses were available to take us to our final destination. They asked us how we felt about leaving our family (they seemed very worried about us) and they continually told us to "keep smiling through."
The air-raid warden told us that he worked as a bus driver during the day and he also spent some of his time teaching women how to drive the buses because so many men were in the army.
A few minutes later a woman called Mrs Hopkins, who was wearing a head scarf and a red dress covered with white spots, came into the room. She had just arrived from her job in the parachute factory. She also helped look after us.
While we were waiting for the buses the grown-ups tried to keep us busy and entertained. Sergeant Roady taught us some dances - the Lambeth Walk and the Jitterbug. The Lambeth walk was quite easy (although everyone had to pretend they had braces to tuck their thumbs in). We tried to write down the instructions for this dance. The jitterbug was much harder but we enjoyed it a lot.
Another thing we did during the day was to help Mrs. Hopkins.
A few days earlier Mrs. Hopkins had heard that her Aunt Ethel's house had been bombed. The family could not be found and Mrs. Hopkins was very worried about them. They might be injured or even dead. She had heard nothing from them since and so she had collected some of their possessions from the damaged building.
Mrs. Hopkins read us the last letter that her aunt had written to her. It gave lots of news about Aunt Ethel's family and after listening to it we were able to help Mrs. Hopkins sort out the possessions by deciding which member of the family they probably belonged to. We made lists of things that would be likely to belong to Great Uncle Stanley, Uncle Sidney, Auntie Ethel, the children Doris, Emily or baby Kenneth.
Once during the day the air raid siren sounded. When we heard it we went straight into the public air raid shelter in the basement. All the evacuees were worried about where we were going to end up. The noises were so loud - like thunder and lightning. While we were in the air raid shelter we sang songs including "Run, rabbit run!" and "There'll be Blue-birds over the White Cliffs of Dover". We also played games and told jokes to take our minds off the bombing. When the siren went, we went straight into the public air raid shelter in the basement. All the evacuees were worried about where we were going to end up. We could hear the bombs exploding and some sounded very close. The noise was loud like thunder crashes and it hurt our ears.
The Air Raid Warden helped us to practise putting our gas masks on and holding our breath while we did it. Then he showed us two suitcases that had been left behind at the Distribution Centre by two other evacuees just like us. In both cases there was a small teddy, underwear made of itchy wool and clothes, most of which had patches. We had to wait a long, long time before we heard the "all clear" and could get out of the shelter.
We carried our lunch in a brown paper bag. Most people had sandwiches with jam, spam, cheese or egg. The lucky children had butter on their bread but others only had dripping. We had some fruit (an apple or pear), a few plain biscuits and a drink of water or squash.
We were not allowed food like crisps, fizzy drinks, sweets or chocolate. We couldn't have fruit like bananas or pineapples either because they were not available during the war. The reason is that they had to be brought from abroad and the ships were needed to bring more important things.