At times of war!!

AT TIMES OF WAR!  BY JUSTIN BARWICK

If I remember rightly it was a chilly February morning in 1942 when we all heard the air raid sirens begin to wail their haunting and by now familiar refrain.  The whole school trooped outside, turned a corner and were led in single file down a flight of steps that went down beneath the actual classrooms.  Our makeshift communal air raid shelter was a derelict swimming pool.  Nobody had used it in decades.  We all gathered in the empty swimming pool and sat cross legged, staring fearfully at one another.  For several minutes after the sirens had ceased their funereal dirge there was an eerie silence.  Then there came an almighty bang, right above our heads.  We were all covered from head to toe in plaster dust and broken roof tiles as the ceiling above our heads shuddered and shook from the force of the direct hit that our school must have suffered.  Inside we were a curious mixture of emotions, fear that we could be crushed beneath our own school, and tentative joy that we might have several weeks or even months of freedom from lessons stretching out in front of us.  There were several more alarming thuds from overhead, followed by a deafening silence.

Eventually our geography teacher Mr Harrison spoke up.  ‘Now then children, it would seem as if the worst might well be over.  I and two of my colleagues, Mr Robinson and Mr Bellamy will scout ahead to see if the stairs up to the playground are safe for us all to ascend.  It is imperative that you all remain seated where you are in the swimming pool.  Do I make myself understood?’
‘Yes Mr Harrison.’ we all replied solemnly.  The only trouble was that I was bursting to go to the lavatory.  As it happened I was sat very close to the ladder leading down into the shallow end of the pool.  By some quirk of fate all of my classmates had their backs to me.  So as silently as possible I crept up the ladder whilst the remaining teachers were busy discussing matters amongst themselves. 

I crept through a doorway that led to the mens changing rooms and shower cubicles.  The toilets lay through a second doorway at the far end.  Feeling adventurous I decided to explore the various different rooms.  The shower cubicles were utterly deserted.  But as I entered the changing rooms I was startled to see two very strange figures sat close together on one of the wooden benches. They appeared to be cloaked in bright orange garments made of some kind of plastic, not that I would know anything about that.  Their faces were masked by sinister respirators, very much like a superior kind of gas mask.  I stood in the doorway listening to their fascinating conversation.  ‘Radiation levels are still dangerously high, judging by my instrument readings.’ one of the men said sombrely.
‘So we stay in the fall out shelter for another three months?’ The second man  suggested dejectedly.  ‘I ‘m afraid that’s about the size of it.  How much longer will the food rations last?’
‘We should be able to hold out for at least another nine months.’
‘Ri-ight.  Well by my reckoning radiation levels should have fallen to inhabitable levels in approximately five months time.  If our luck holds we should all make it out alive.  If!’


I had no idea what this radiation thing was that they were talking about, but it sounded pretty damn serious.  The two orange garbed men stood up and proceeded to disappear through the changing room wall.  Delayed fright took hold of me and I clean forgot about attending to my toiletry requirements.  I ran back past the showers and out into the vast and echoing swimming pool area.  Amazingly nobody had noticed that I had gone.  I descended the ladder and resumed my former position in the shallow end.  It was not long before Messrs Harrison, Robinson and Bellamy returned from their expedition to announce that the staircase was clear of any serious debris, so that we could all make our way in an orderly manner up and out onto the playground.  We emerged into a choking mass of dark grey smoke.  The school lay in ruins.  Fierce fires were blazing in many of the classrooms.  We all groaned when we heard the disappointing news that we would all be forced to continue our education in a neighbouring school, no more than five miles distant from any of the pupils houses.  Those who still had houses that is. 

As the years rolled by I forgot all about those two peculiar orange men and their surreal conversation.  Then in about 1975 I happened to see a government information film regarding the imminent threat of nuclear war.  When I saw those strangely familiar men clad in their orange suits and sinister respirators stumbling clumsily through dense clouds of smoke I felt an eerie sensation of de-ja-vu.  Way back in the dark and foreboding winter of 1942 could I really have glimpsed an apocalyptic future time when the world would truly be ravaged by nuclear armageddon?  I could only hope and pray that what I had seen way back in the mists of time was a glimpse of an alternative earth, with an alternative future to our own.  Because to be painfully honest, I didn’t fancy our chances one little bit...