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| Ernest "Billy" Barton |
Following his demobilisation at the end of World War 2, my great uncle, Ernest "Billy" Barton - who had been a professional solider before the war - became an instructor at the Civil Defence Training School in Eastwood Park, Falfield, Gloucestershire.
The school was originally founded in 1936 as the Civilian Anti-Gas School with the aim of training groups of civilians in what to do in the case of a gas attack in a future war.
By the late 1940s, there was little concern about gas attacks. Two things had changed that - Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And in 1949 the British government formed the Civil Defence Corps to train civilians in what to do in the case of a nuclear attack.
