The Worst of Times: General Sir Peter De La Billiere: The house crackled like a firework display

AT SEVEN and a half, I went to a boarding school called St Peter's Court at Sherbrooke Park in Devon.

It was three days into the beginning of winter term, and against my mother's better wishes I had taken back my grandfather's stamp album, which was worth a lot of money. I knew nothing about stamps really, but I had wanted to have it at school to show it off.

My dormitory was off the main hallway. I heard a strange sort of clinking noise, and I opened the door and looked out to see what it was. I don't know why I remember the time, but I do, it was 2am. All the lights were out, so it was pitch black, and there was clattering and strange noises and a whiff of smoke round the place. And I thought, I don't want to have anything to do with this, and went back to bed.

This is exactly what children do if there is a fire, it is animal instinct to curl up or hide and hope it is going to go away.

And then Charles Ridgeway, the deputy headmaster, came in and said: 'The building's ablaze, we can't get down the stairs, go out on to the veranda.' Three dormitories had access to that particular veranda, so 40 to 45 boys were herded there, literally in our pyjamas, no question of picking anything up, and we huddled together in the January cold.

The veranda was about 40ft high, and the only means we had of getting down was by tearing up sheets into strips and knotting them together, and for the boys to slip down the strips. Tearing up the sheets and knotting them was a fairly time-consuming job for Mr Ridgeway. First he had to put them over the balustrade and secure them, and then get the boys over the balustrade and on to the sheets, and it was not a foregone conclusion that they knew how to slide down.

Meanwhile, you could hear the house crackling away. Initially it was burning quite lightly, but as the temperature built up the fire started to roar. And as we stood there, sparks started coming out of the roof as the whole of the centre began to collapse. It was like a massive firework display over one's head.

The door of the dormitory was shut, but it amazed me that within what seemed like seconds, fire blazed across the room in a great avalanche, devouring everything as it went along, and the flames began to lick through the shutters, which had been pulled across the windows. And that began to be very scary.

At the same time, being small boys, there was a degree of thrill for the adventure of it all; we hadn't got the vision to see that it could be the disaster it was actually proving to be.

The sheets weren't strong enough to carry more than about four or five boys before they snapped, and so every fourth or fifth boy there would be a dull thud whenever the sheets happened to have broken. And then some of them were all right and some of them weren't all right, depending from what height the sheets had broken.

Meanwhile, the flames started getting nearer and nearer, and as they were literally eating their way through the shutters, my turn came, and I slid down the sheets no problem - you can do these things in an emergency.

And as I got to the bottom, the fire brigade finally arrived, and a great cheer went up from groups of boys, all in similar positions on verandas around this blazing building.

The fire brigade put up ladders, which were much more efficient than the sheets, so many more were rescued before the flames could get to them.

But some people had to jump. It was clear that some boys weren't going to get down before the flames came out and burnt them up, unless they jumped. Some landed on railings and spiked themselves, and they died, of course, and the matron was killed, very gallantly rescuing other boys.

Mr Ridgeway was something of a hero as well. I had had several wallopings from him for causing disturbances and things, but he was a thoroughly pleasant chap. On this night, he was cool-headed, he gave leadership to the boys, and he organised us in a way we would have been incapable of organising ourselves. Without him there would have been a greater loss of life.

After a while we were all congregated in the greenhouse where we sat and talked in rather subdued tones, wondering what was going to happen next.

We also wondered where the next meal was going to come from, because we were starting to get rather hungry, and there was nothing left of the school, it was gutted.

I was desperately concerned about my stamp album, which had been collected by my grandfather and had Penny Blacks and Tuppenny Blues. Of course, the stamp album went up in flames, and that was that, and it is no more.

We stayed in the greenhouse to the point where we were getting bored, and then rumours that we might be going home started to percolate, which cheered us up no end; we thought perhaps we were in for a good dose of holidays, just having returned from one.

There is now in my memory a total and utter blank. The next thing I remember is being at home and discussing with my mother whether I was going to go to school locally, or whether I was going to stay at home until the school could organise a new site. She left the choice to me, and I decided I was going to stay at home. And I was totally content being a nuisance at home for some months, and I don't remember waking up with nightmares or anything like that.

It's in after-life that the impact of this event has come back to me, and made me very conscious of the threat of fire. For instance, when I became a father, my children had fire drills. I don't suppose anyone else's do, but mine did, and they were drilled on how to get out of the house.

I have been conscious throughout my life of the need to assume there is going to be a fire in any building I am in at any time, and make sure I know how to get out. And when sending my children to school, I made quite sure that the precautions in the school were extensive, and, most important, that all the children were practised in the means of escaping.

The next term, when we went back to another building, fire precautions in the form of inertia wheels had been put into all the dormitories, and you had to practise on these regularly, and as this was in effect abseiling out of the window, it was, as you can imagine, an extremely popular pastime.

But I think, looking back on it, one must criticise the school for not having had proper fire drills and something laid on, even if it was only a rope to throw over the balcony. It obviously hadn't been thought about at all. Too late, the school learnt the lesson of needing to have fire precautions.

General Sir Peter de la Billiere was head of the SAS and commander of the British forces in the Gulf. He has written about his experiences there in 'Storm Command', published by HarperCollins at pounds 18.

(Photograph omitted)