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My Schooling in Wartime

I was nine years old when the Second World War started and I remember being evacuated. When many people hear stories about evacuation, they hear of children being sent away on their own, but there was a second part of the evacuation scheme that I remember. Very small children were evacuated with their mothers and other older children could go with them. My younger sister was about one year old and so we all went together, my mother, my two sisters and me to Ipswich. We must have travelled on Saturday 2nd of September because I remember Chamberlain’s speech on the radio in our new billet. I also remember the brown paper carrier bag we were given containing emergency rations.

Suddenly next day some unfortunate local school had a large contingent of evacuees dumped on it. We were seated in a large room with tiers of seats like an auditorium. I was somewhere near the back and a man teacher gave us an arithmetic lesson. He taught us how to recognise multiples and I still remember what he said. If numbers ended in an even number it was divisible by two, if the last two digits of a large number could be divided by four the whole number was divisible by four. Add all digits, if the answer was a multiple of three or nine the number was divisible by three or nine. He was a wonderful teacher for I have never forgotten what he taught in that one lesson on the day after war was declared.

Two of my mother’s sisters had also been evacuated with their children. I do not know how it was arranged but somehow the three families moved into a large house in Felixstowe. My elder sister and I went to a convent school. They were very kind to us but the only thing I remember clearly was the class analysing in detail the first chapter (we never got beyond it), of Treasure Island. It was enough to put you off for life.

Since none of the bombing, which had been expected, materialised, we all returned home after two or three months. Most schools were closed so lessons were held every afternoon in people’s houses. I remember learning in a very small group how a petrol engine worked, which I suppose was useful but scarcely systematic education so I joined my cousin in a boarding school in Derbyshire. While the teaching was quite good for its time I did not enjoy the experience of being away from my family. French I found incomprehensible and I could not see the point of cricket. Fortunately my mother and sisters came to live in the area so I could come home at weekends and visit the public library. Both my parents were prolific readers and recommended all sorts of books. One of the disadvantages of wartime was the boredom induced by the lack of the many facilities which had been taken for granted previously, so reading was my escape and helped to fill in gaps in what was a rather scrappy schooling. We were also living in a country district and friends there were farmers and so we were introduced to many ideas and practices of country life previously unknown to us. We came from Ilford in Essex, which was a suburban area so farm life was exciting and different. Most of the farm work was still done with horses. I learned some of the skills of haymaking, helped to make a haystack and helped with stooking corn, (that is standing six sheaves together to let them dry before putting them into a corn rick.) I learned that ‘singling’ sugar beet was hard work, because you had to bend down continuously so as to ‘single’, (that is leave growing one strong plant while digging out the small ones). I also found that muck spreading while smelly was quite enjoyable and a very good antidote to my town bred sensitivities.
We return to our own home in 1943 just in time for the onslaught of doodlebugs and V2’s. The return to school after one holiday was delayed for some reason. This was just as well, since on the very morning we would have begun classes the rocket engine of a V2 hit our classroom. It buried itself deep in the floor, surrounded by the twisted metal frames of our desks.
Somehow, after all that, in 1945, I passed my School Certificate, which was something like modern GCSE’s. I think that had something to do with the Ipswich teacher and the public libraries.

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