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John Exall's Story A pupil at Petworth Boys School 1942   I thought that my late father John Exall’s story would be of interest to the readers, these are his own words and thoughts of the Bombing of the Boys School in Petworth on September 29th 1942.   It was a damp and miserable day when we went to school that morning. My brother Bob was twelve and I was eleven.   At break time I was playing around in the cloakroom when the first bomb dropped. I remember seeing the dust fall from the ceiling. I ran to get out of the building but was told to go the other way as we had been told there was an escape route through the laundry into the tunnel that went into Petworth Park: but that was not to be as the bomb fell on the laundry too.   There were two more bombs and by that time I don’t remember much more as I was buried under the rubble. I came to and heard a lot of voices and realised that I couldn’t move except for one arm, which I managed to push up through the rubble.   It was like a very bad dream and when I heard the other boys shouting and screaming I realised that it was not a dream.   My father, who was a part-time fireman, was on his way to Billingshurst when he heard the bomb drop. He made his way back to Petworth and realised it was the school that had been hit.   Firemen already there, who knew he had two boys in the school, turned him away, so he went home to tell Mum and the other parents in Grove Lane what had happened. They anxiously awaited news!   Bob had been blown onto the wall the other side of the road then fell off.   When my arm was spotted I was rescued by the Canadian soldiers and taken by one of their army trucks to the Cottage Hospital, but was then transferred to Chichester Hospital. I had quite serious injuries to my back and leg and a smashed up arm. I awoke in the ward and found out I was next to my brother who had injuries to his leg and knee. He was in hospital for 7 weeks and I was there for 8 weeks.   My parents had not heard what had happened to me until the evening. What a relief for them to have both sons alive. The Canadians were wonderful during this time and Petworth will be forever grateful to them.   John Exall   As a footnote I would like to add that on that fateful day, 28 boys, the Headteacher, a teacher and staff in the laundry all lost their lives, when the lone bomber discharged his ‘deadly cargo’ before going home.   Angela Guy © Copyright rests with the author source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/29/a4529829.shtml     Michael Stacey's Story An evacuee to Petworth & Midhurst   One summer’s evening in 1940, aged 7, I was sat reading my new book “Britain’s Wonderful Air force,” delivered just around 7pm by our wonderful postal service. I was sitting in the front room window of my home, high at the back of Brighton over looking Preston barracks with the sea on the horizon.   I spotted a Me109 diving over the dust distractor chimney off Lewes Road and it released 2 bombs that struck the Southern Railway Engineering Works at Brighton Station.   Around this time, my mother was told to evacuate my young brother (born in July 1939) and myself. My father, being a Brighton Borough Policeman had to stay, so my mother took us to live with my uncle and aunt at Petworth. We stayed in their beautiful cottage, where Uncle was gardener to the Vicar of Petworth and he tended quite a large estate.   We had not been at Petworth too long, before a bomb went down the chimney at Petworth Boy’s School. 22 boys and staff were killed. Although I was attending school at the local Parish Hall, I saw and heard the bomb falling from the Heinkel 111.   We moved to some friends of the family, but would you believe it? It was to Aldingbourne at the end of the Tangmere runway! We went into Chichester several times on the Southdown bus. A curtain was run along the windows as we passed Tangmere, so that spies could not see!   Unfortunately, like all the Battle of Britain aerodromes, it was badly bombed, so off we went again to live at my uncle’s pub in Midhurst — the “Omnibus and Horses” on the Petersfield crossroads, opposite the old Tabernacle (the HQ of the local Home Guard). We settled here and lived reasonably well — I went to Midhurst Primary School and was a member of the Midhurst Church Choir.   Sometime, probably in 1943, Midhurst was hit by 2 bombs at about 4.30/5pm. A Dornier 17 was being chased, and it jettisoned its bombs. I watched one bomb come down just behind the Tabernacle, flattening a row of cottages. The Tabernacle probably saved my life because I was outside watching. Another bomb went through a Doctor’s house near the Church and wrecked another row of cottages. I believe 2 or 3 people were killed. Other bombs dropped in the fields near the Cowdray ruins.   I ran into the pub to see how my uncle and aunt were — I found them crawling out from under a large table. They had been doing the banking and the floor was carpeted with white fivers and the window was blown in, frame and all.   Apart from a Bren Gun carrier coming through the saloon bar wall, the passing of several doodlebugs, and the continuous noise of convoys of lorries and tanks moving to the coast for the D-Day landings - not a lot more happened!   I went back to Brighton in September 1944 for my first term at Varndean School for Boys, and a bit of peace!   © Copyright rests with the author source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/83/a4314683.shtml     Patricia (Patti) Pope Story with her permission.   I was seven when war broke out, my sister Janice only one. I heard the grown-ups talking about the likelihood though it was all hushed up when children were about (unlike today) and I only thought of war as something that happened far away, possibly between cowboys and Indians.   As my father had joined the Royal Corps of Signals as a boy soldier, serving in India, he was a reservist. My beloved Daddy, my companion and teacher, was ‘called up’. Having broken my heart he told me how my tears hurt him, asked me to be brave and from then on I never cried in front of him again.   We followed the advice given out on the radio to make a gas-proof room, with the windows of our house in Whippingham Road taped up to stop being cut by flying glass. Later on in the war we had an iron table shelter in there.   On hearing the siren our mother would hurry us all in there, wearing gas masks, baby in a sort of iron lung contraption and we stayed till the all clear sounded. Grandad, our mother’s father who lived a couple of streets away, a Great War veteran who now worked as a postman, would come and check on us all because we and other relatives all lived nearby.   At first Brighton was considered safe and we took in a little London evacuee of nine. He cried all the time for his Mum, who rarely visited, wet the bed every night, at very little and ruined life for me by telling me Father Christmas didn’t exist. London was taking a real bashing and we used to hear the German bombers droning overhead en route for London and the major cities like Coventry. In the shelter we used to sing ‘There’ll be bluebirds over”, “I’ll be loving you always” and “We’ll meet again” as well as rude songs about Goering.   The evacuee went back home, Daddy was posted to France. Gradually ‘safe’ Brighton wasn’t so safe. Mum had her bag stolen off baby’s pram as we shopped — all gone, money (little enough), ration books, precious letters from Daddy and her rosary and her keys. Later that night I heard a noise at the front door — keys in the lock. Mum shouted out “Who’s that?” A voice, after a pause, said: “It’s the A.R.P — put that light out.” As no light was on and the door had been tried we guessed it was the thief — he had our address and our keys. But he went. Of course we had no phone then, not for many years after. We had to beg to use the phone at the pub two doors away. Mum worked there some evenings but as soon as the siren went (or sireen, they said) she shot back to us and the bar emptied!   German planes returning from a bombing raid use to empty their remaining bombs before crossing the Channel. The cinema at Kemp Town was hit, and the clinic, and one day as I was coming home from Elm Grove School for my dinner our street was strafed with bullets. Mum shoved baby into the arms of a surprised tally-man she was talking to at the front door and flew up the street to me. She thought I was dead but I was only doing what we had been taught to do at school if you were caught out in an air raid — crouch down as low as possible and protect your head.   One night I wanted to stay in my bedroom at the back of the house. Luckily during the night I changed my mind and crept down to the shelter to join Mum and baby. Before morning a bomb was dropped onto the railway line below the street behind ours. All the back windows in the street were smashed by the blast and my bed was littered with glass shards. Grandad came round to check on us again and back we all trooped to the safety of the house he shared with our Nan. We were all shocked. I remember Mum hopping about trying to get dressed and putting two legs into one leg of her cami-knickers in her haste.   Some people came to the church hall offering to take war-worn kiddies for a week’s holiday. I asked to go. It was ghastly. At Worplesdon we were bathed (WE had a BATHROOM), searched for nits and lice, treated like poor kids (What? Us? Never!) and shoved into dormitories. Matron’s daughter bullied us mercilessly and after a few days, in desperation, I jumped on her back screaming at her and pulling her hair. I was in disgrace and it was with great relief that we soon went home.   Daddy, meanwhile, had had an accident on his signaller’s motorbike in France. He was shipped back from Dieppe to Newhaven and as he was put on the London train at Brighton station he managed to slip a note to a railwayman. Because of security his note, penned for Mum and brought to her by the railwayman, couldn’t give details so he wrote in his beautiful copperplate handwriting, so she immediately knew who it was from: “The bad penny has turned up again”. She knew he was safe and I loved the thought that my lovely handsome Daddy had been so close.   He was at Braintree for a while recuperating and getting more worried about us. The result was that we went to stay with my auntie and uncle at our beloved Petworth, 40 miles away - peace and country life, or so we thought. Sadly our cousin, their son, had been killed at El Alamein and the house was full of grief, tears and whispers. The house only had two bedrooms so we slept all in one bed, Mum, little sister and me, head to toe.   Janice and I went to school — she was in the infants and I was at the girls’ school. The boys’ school was down the hill, opposite Petworth House. One day, being the milk monitor, I was near the open window. I heard a low whine and looked up to see a German plane (I recognised the swastika on it) diving and then the dreadful crump of bombs. The boys’ school had been hit. I heard later the Germans meant to bomb Petworth House because sometimes top security meetings were held there. My mother, who was working at the nearby chemist’s shop, heard it all and rushed from work to grab me and my sister. Five boys, all playmates, from our lane were killed — I later found out more than 25 pupils and staff died altogether. Luckily my cousin Gerald, who only had one lung, wasn’t at school that day. The Canadian soldiers billeted nearby rushed to the scene and helped in the rescue.   That did it. Daddy by now was fit and back at Catterick Camp in Yorkshire, the Signals’ regimental base. We returned to Brighton and Daddy was given 24 hours compassionate leave. He rode his motorbike, almost non-stop, from North Yorkshire to Brighton. I remember his face was black when he arrived apart from the white under his goggles. He took off his big gauntlet gloves and Mum gave him big basins of tea. During the evening there were quiet discussions and Daddy said enough was enough. He would arrange for us all to be evacuated up North where it was safer. He found us a billet with a butcher in South Elmsall, Yorkshire.   Sadly we left home once again and said goodbye to our lovely Nan, Grandad, aunts, uncles and cousins. Janice and I were dressed in our best. I wore my outfit made by a local dressmaker. I loved the coat but hated the hat and the elastic holding it on, and my best shoes hurt and my gloves felt stiff. Little sister was dressed entirely in white — coat, leggings, shoes and socks and a fluffy white bonnet. At Rugby, as the Yorkshire train waited to change lines, a German plane dived and shot up the train. Mum threw us on the carriage floor and lay down on top of us to shelter us with her body. When we got up Janice’s lovely white outfit was black!   The Yorkshire butcher and his family greeted us (what funny voices they had!) and we had a huge beef roast — but with the Yorkshire pudding served first, with gravy, which seemed very strange to us.   I was enrolled at school and was the centre of attention with my ‘posh’ southern voice. It was a long walk up to school and every morning as I left the butcher’s dog jumped up the back fence and followed me. Every day I had to take him back, being late for school and scolded as a result, though I never said why. Once the school board man came across me on the way. I was scared and knew he did not believe me when I explained why I was late. I missed Brighton and my home and family so much. Daddy was near but not often able to visit. One evening as we sat at our meal (always loads of meat) I got carried away and told our hosts how, at home, we used to hide from the tally-man if Mum had no money. I failed to notice her face darkening with anger and happily embellished the tale. Later, in our bedroom, I was smacked VERY hard and, hating Mum at that moment, I threw her poor slippers on the fire (there was lots of coal, too, in Yorkshire).   Next day I felt I had to run away, to find Daddy or to get back to Brighton and home. I offered to take my little sister for a walk but I knew I’d go further. We walked and walked, with me telling Janice we were going to find Daddy. After some hours it began to rain and Mum was panicking but I was doggedly pushing on through the countryside. “Soon be there” I told my sobbing sister, who only wanted food, warmth and Mum. The sky was dark and I still pushed on, though I had no real idea where Catterick was. By now the police had been informed and finally Daddy was alerted too, and in the gloom, an Army vehicle drove up. “I’m going to find my Daddy” was all I kept saying. We were taken back to Mum who was relieved but very angry. I remember how the elastic hurt my chin as she jerked my hat off.   Mum and Daddy had a brief but intense discussion. “We’re going home, Len, bugger the bloody bombs.” She confessed she hated Yorkshire and longed for the sea and home. So our evacuee days were over. Daddy was posted to London and we saw him more often. The war buzzed over and around us but thankfully we all stayed safe!   © Copyright rests with the author source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/67/a5632067.shtml     'WW2 People's War is an online archive of wartime memories contributed by members of the public and gathered by the BBC. The archive can be found at bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar'

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