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Mr Hillier, was a student teacher and he had great difficulty controlling the class. Of course he was young, it wasn’t fair, they used to torment him. And then there used to be a cry of ‘Lids up’, and he used to start throwing chalk, blackboard dusters and various objects at the boys who had annoyed him.

All sorts of pranks went on. I can remember one boy. The Germans used to have target practices, you mentioned earlier, but they also used to have like, machine gun pits and rifle pits in all the fields around. And they used to leave all these blank cartridges, and sometimes live ammunition as well. And there was this great big fireplace in there, and one day this particular boy, who I can remember well, actually, he’s still alive, I won’t mention his name, but he walked into the class and he was grinning at us. And the fire was burning, it was just sort of coal dust and peat, you know, because they excavated peat from the Grande Mare, and he chucked a couple of these into the fire, and of course they went off, and there was soot and dust everywhere!
ARTHUR KLEIN

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