Life went on as best it could, children still went to school, armed with their gas masks.  Mary Petitt moved to Dunsbury in 1944 aged 6 and remembers: Miss Nicholson had a Scottie dog, which she brought  to school.  If there was an air raid warning in school time, we all had to go into the Morrison shelter that was erected in the smaller of the two school rooms in Hulverstone. The dog came too. We all had gas masks during the war and they had to be tested every now and then. We had to go into a large grey van parked in the road wearing our masks to make sure that they were working!

Audrey Rann (Barnes) was a young girl at the school and remembers sharing the wash basins and toilets with the soldiers: There were about 15 soldiers and they were responsible for the ack-ack gun behind our house (Bank Cottage). We all knew it was there of course, and it was fired when the planes were going over. All the soldiers were nice and friendly. Mr. Young was the Officer who commanded the unit and he would go to the post office, next door, and buy bars of chocolate and give them to us school children. We didn`t eat them in school, we knew better than that, but would take them home.