England’s annual celebration of local history and architecture on Sunday 13th September saw thousands of people enjoying the usually inaccessible buildings and historic treasures of King’s Lynn. One such location was the World War II air-raid shelters where members of 42F (King’s Lynn) Squadron’s Air Cadets had swapped their uniforms for the day for those of the Civil Defence Corps.
Volunteers from Bridge for Heroes, a local charity set up to support service personnel and veterans dealing with Post Traumatic Stress (PTSD) and readjustment issues, together with 42F’s cadets ushered hundreds of people down into the shelter tunnels beneath the town’s Tuesday Market Place.
With recordings of ‘air raid’ and ‘all clear’ sirens sounding it was an enlightening involvement for the cadets who were in some way reliving the experiences of the Squadron’s first cadets who, during the actual conflict of 1939-45 acted as fire watchers and police runners for the town.