This article was published in the West Sussex Gazette on 14th July 1994.

In this penultimate episode of Peter Longhurst's early reminisces, he is still living at his parental home at the end of Kingsley Close backing onto Ham Bridge Halt at East Worthing.

Before the war, Peter joined the Air Defence Cadet Corps which later became the Air Training Corps (ATC). 'We drilled at the Girls' High School in South Farm Road, and behind the nearby parade of shops a real aircraft was kept in a large building for tuition, and if my memory is correct it was a yellow canvas-covered biplane. The bit I enjoyed most about the ATC was the church parades.

After assembling outside the girls' school, we marched off to the beat of our own bugle and drum band, up past the Thomas A'Becket towards Durrington, stopping for a rest on grass verges on either side of Salvington Road (taken since for road widening), and still made it in time to St Symphorian's church on Durrington Hill for the service there.'

At the beginning of the war, teenage Peter and his friends helped to take the boats and canoes off the beach at East Worthing and put them on marshland where Brooklands is now, to clear the way for beach defences.
When evacuees from London descended on Worthing, Peter and his fellow classmates had to give up their classrooms at Sussex Road School for them, and continued their own education at the Congregational Church on the corner of Shelley Road and Buckingham Road (now URC).'But it was so crowded.

You all sat on forms in the one large hall. A sheer waste of time. No register was kept so attendance was a hit and miss affair.'

Peter reminisces about wartime adventures with his school pals on the Downs: 'We often used to go up Charmandean Lane to the Downs, waving at the girls as we passed the school. At the top of the lane was a military rifle range where spent cartridge cases lay around. Putting them in our pockets we'd use them later as catapult ammunition, firing them up in the air in the fields and listening to their whistle on the way down.'
On one occasion, they came across the remains of a German plane that had crashed into the ground and gathered what souvenirs they could find.

'Broken pieces of the perspex cockpit cover we later carved into little Spitfire brooches and the like. We found light aluminium oars, probably intended for an emergency dinghy if crashing into the sea. Several bars of chocolate with their purple Cadbury's wrappers covered by a German label were soaked in some kind of spirit and were inedible. And the greatest prize of all was a Very pistol for firing flares.'

Peter served as a messenger in the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) --- station C 6N, based in a timber yard opposite the Vine Inn in High Street, Tarring (the site is now the pub's car park) --- with his mate Ted Gurr who then lived in Brougham Road but now lives in New Zealand. 'There was room for three or four fire engines in the warehouse there. We joined because we wanted to wear the steel helmet and fireman's uniform.'
It was in August 1941 the AFS changed its name to the National Fire Service (NFS).

In the final instalment of Peter Longhurst's vivid memories we touch on: Lancing Carriage Works and the Battle of Britain; Ham Bridge Halt and two local girls; and an enemy strike at the gas works.