Another memory of that time: to confuse possible invaders, all road signs were taken down as was the board telling people that this was Prescot Grammar School. However, the stumps originally supporting this sign had been "capped" and boys could stand on one foot on any of there four stumps. My grandmother and an aunt lived in Sydney, NSW, Australia used to send us food parcels during the war including wonderful, homemade fruit cakes. I can still remember standing perched on one of these stumps munching a piece of this cake which my mother had put up for me in my school bag. Even by the time I left the school in 1953, the notice board had not been replaced although new school gates, duly named and crested in typical R S Briggs fashion, had been installed. The old ones had been taken away for melting down for the War effort some while before I came to the school in 1943. [John Willmott]

Every morning at Assembly R.S.Briggs would read out the names of boys killed in action or missing . Also the names of those receiving decorations for valour.  That sort of sobering experience puts its mark on a generation. [Rod Crook]

During the early period of the war we carried gas masks with us at all times. There were periodic practice sessions -a bit like lifeboat drill on a ship, and we went down into the shelters which sat close to the soccer pitch a little towards Prescot from the old entrance to Knowsley Park. Very early in the war when we all expected German paratroopers to arrive on the playing fields there was a gun emplacement in the field at the St James Rd (Wellington Pub) end. Two or three men (I think old,but then again I was quite young so every one else seemed old) in khaki sat with an ancient Lewis gun -1st war vintage. Very Dad's Armyish. We collected shrapnel -bits of bombs and shells which fell during the blitz. [Rod Crook]