大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Elizabeth Perez of Stockport Libraries on behalf of Elizabeth Chapman and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

In those days it was "School Certificate". That was the first examination "hurdle" you had to get over before going on to "better things", we were told. By now, we who had started out together in the "Beta" form had arrived in the third year and were beginning to think seriously about the examination which was to take place in our fourth year at school. It was time to get down to some really hard work. There were stacks of homework to be done and woe betide anyone who attempted a bit of "backsliding"!

Discipline was strict, but despite this, or perhaps because of it, the school was a happy one. Good manners were insisted upon at all times and nowhere was this made more evident than in the dining-room. Here conversation was never allowed to exceed a certain noise-level. Each table seated eight girls. There were white starched table-cloths upon each table and if more than three stains appeared on any one table-cloth during the week, that particular table became a bare-board table the following week!

Rationing again reared its ugly head here. However, despite curtailed foodstuffs, school lunches were pretty good for war-time. There was one incident though, that was remembered by girls and staff alike for years afterwards. Meat during the war became an extremely precious commodity and various substitutes had to be resorted to in order to eke out the supplies. Accordingly, at one lunch-time a certain dish called "lentil pie" appeared on the menu. There was much muttering and grumbling. Nobody liked it at all. We all rebelled and left the offending pie on our plates which were then taken back to the kitchen to be thrown away, - upon which the Cook, who was extremely upset, burst into tears! There was endless trouble about this episode. We all had to go and individually apologise to cook and had to listen to a long lecture from the headmistress on what wicked girls we were to criticise Cook's efforts to keep the school meals up to a reasonable level despite the rationing! We were all very chastened after this severe dressing down and there was no more complaining after this, but the "lentil pie" incident was never completely forgotten!

Arriving at school one morning I saw that one of my classmates seemed to be the centre of an ever-growing crowd of eager, chattering schoolgirls. She was being questioned eagerly about something. What was going on? I joined the jostling crowd.
"But what was he like, Kathleen?" asked somebody.
鈥淒id he have a gun?鈥� asked somebody else.
鈥淲hat did he say?鈥� 鈥淲as he handsome?鈥�
What on earth were they talking about?!
Kathleen spoke up:- 鈥淲ell, I鈥檓 not really supposed to tell you鈥︹��
鈥淥h, you can tell us, surely?鈥� 鈥淲e鈥檙e all dying to know鈥ome on!鈥�
It appeared that early that morning, after the air-raid which we had had the previous night, a German parachutist had "bailed out" of his shattered aircraft and had landed in the shrubbery in the garden of Kathleen's Bramhall home. He had just walked into the house and given himself up! No wonder Kathleen had been the centre of attention that morning. The excitement lasted for the rest of the week! .

On another occasion my best school chum was summoned mysteriously from the geometry lesson by the headmistress. There was a special visitor to see her. Who could it be? When she returned, it was to tell us that her Canadian cousin who was an officer in the Canadian Air Force had called at the school to see her, during a very hasty twenty-four hours' leave. By the time my friend would have arrived back at home that afternoon, he would have been on his way back to his squadron and so he had dropped in at the school for a lightening visit. We were all very impressed and quite envious of her! Not everyone had a cousin who was an officer in the Canadian Air Force! (What things were subsequently to befall this cousin would have been first-class material for a war-time best-seller thriller! His aircraft crashed into German-occupied France and he, aided by the French Resistance, had to pose as a deaf and dumb beggar until the end of the war to escape detection by the Germans!).

Holidays, particularly seaside holidays, were curtailed during the war years. Seashores were protected from possible landings by rolled-up barbed wire and the positioning of land-mines. People either went inland to the countryside, or just abandoned the idea of a holiday as such until after the war. But one day, on the school notice-board, there was a holiday advertised especially for schoolgirls. This was run by a group of ladies who called themselves the "University Women's Camps for Schoolgirls". This particular holiday was to be held in the Lake District. We consulted our parents. Yes we could go! The cost was reasonable. It would do us good! So my school-chum (of the Canadian cousin fame) and I put our names down to go for a fortnight. We were very excited. Neither of us had been to the Lake District before. Our destination was to be a little village called Bampton, not far from Haweswater.

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