Now put your books down…and get your gas masks out. Quietly. Now take them carefully out of their boxes - no, no, Isobel, don't drag at it…you show her how to do it, Margaret, will you.

In the early years of the war a gas mask was an ever-present accoutrement - an unfashionable, square, cardboard box - or it was until Woolworths came up with a variety of alternative metal canisters.

Everyday you would have to have gas mask on you just in case there was a bombing. So everywhere we went we had a gas mask box with us ... an A2 collage all about ww2 . This morning we meat ...