大象传媒

Reminiscences of World War II
My Wartime Schooldays
by Maryan Trevor

I was eleven when war was declared in September 1939 and due to start at the grammar school, the new Whalley Range High School for Girls in Manchester. However,
the first thing that happened was that I was evacuated to Clitheroe in Lancashire, in a group of others due to start at the same school but none of whom I knew, the few former friends who had chosen Whalley Range being mysteriously sent elsewhere. After reception in Clitheroe I was taken in by a childless couple and began to attend school in shifts at Rawtenstall High School. Despite good intentions on both sides, I did not get on well with my
hosts and remember more than one session on my knees at bedtime praying that I could go home. As Clitheroe was not too far from Manchester, my father and mother took it in turns to visit me every two or three weeks, and eventually my father decided to take me back home, despite the threat of bombing. I then was able to attend Whalley Range, which was still functioning with a depleted school roll.

In 1940 the bombing raids became heavy, and I remember having to hide under the dining-room table or under the stairs of our small semi, while my father, indifferent to danger, ran upstairs to see what was going on from an upstairs window. Later on, after the installation of an Anderson shelter just beyond the rockery halfway down our back garden, we would set up for the night with blankets, an oil lamp, candles, some food and drink, and and a book. It was all something of an adventure to me, especially as my father could never be persuaded to settle down with us. All the same, most of us quickly learned to react with fear to the ominous rumble of approaching enemy aircraft at night and the warning whine of the air raid siiren. However, despite much damage in the city, we were lucky, and our road and the surrounding roads escaped direct hits. At school also, when the warning sirens sounded, as they occasionally did during the day, we had to leave our classrooms as quickly as possible, taking schoolbooks as well as gas masks with us to into the school shelters -- even, if I remember correctly ,once during exams, taking our papers with us.

Going to school daily meant fixing the gas mask in its fitted pouch over the bulkier
schoolbag on one鈥檚 back to nestle snugly at the side - something of a wrestling match was required, especially in winter on top of a coat and scarf. I and my local friends also went to Girl Guides once a week, when together with the obligatory gas mask a torch was required to see us safely through the blackout. This too could be quite exciting and not a little frightening as we were each on our own for the final few hundred yards of the journey to our own homes. One bonus was that on starry nights there was a wonderful map of the heavens to be seen against the black sky, very different from today鈥檚 purple haze.

In 1942, my family suffered the loss of my eldest brother who was serving in the Royal Navy, drowned when the troopship that was bringing him home on leave was torpedoed off the African coast . Not until after the war had ended did we learn that he had been on the ill-fated S.S. Laconia. Soon after my brother鈥檚 death came the loss of his best friend from pre-war days, who was shot down serving as a navigator during a raid over Germany.

The only consolation in the pain of these bereavements was, I believe, that the sorrow was shared by so many others 鈥� people supported and were supported by each other in their common grief, stoically borne.

Following this, my older sister, who had already left home and was working in a reserved occupation, voluntarily joined the A.T.S. and went off to Kidderminster. Subsequently we received periodic visits from some Canadian servicemen who had met my brother earlier on in Halifax, Nova Scotia, when his duties took him across the Atlantic. Their presence and continuing friendship over the years gave some comfort to my parents.

By now, I was conducting a schoolgirl correspondence with a young sailor who had
sought a penpal from the school, and whom I met eventually once or twice. Within the school, refugees from Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany arrived in small numbers, some of whom were to become my close friends. As the months wore by and the bombing virtually ceased, life became more normal to the extent that the remaining evacuees all returned to the school. We regularly went to tea in each others鈥� houses, or stayed for the weekend, when it was customary to bring little pats of butter or a screw of sugar with you or even part of the sweet ration, to contribute to the rigorously controlled food supplies. Nevertheless, despite our mothers鈥� daily struggle with the food rations to provide three meals a day, there was always home-made cake, if eggless, and plenty of milk dishes such as semolina, tapioca, sago and rice puddings, and custard with everything. Milk was almost too plentiful (by today鈥檚 standards) and full cream milk at that with 鈥榯op of the milk鈥� standing in for churned cream. My own diet included milk for breakfast, for elevenses at school, for daily desserts or custard in the menu of school dinners when they were introduced, in teatime beverages, and in bedtime drinks such as Ovaltine, cocoa or Horlicks. Spam, snoek (whalemeat), even reindeer steaks augmented the meagre amounts available of lamb, beef and pork . Chicken was a luxury, while the appearance of an orange or a banana was extremely rare. However, carrots and swedes, potaoes and cabbage, garden vegetables and fruits were reasonably plentiful, with local allotments enthusiastically cultivated.

As I grew older, I was asked to go with other Guides to serve coffee and tea to servicemen in a canteen in the centre of Manchester on occasional Saturday afternoons. This was fun, though helping out as a wardmaid in a local hospital on a Saturday was not. In the Sixth Form , my classmates and I were invited to volunteer for occasional firewatching duties at the school, sleeping overnight on camp beds up in the Art Room, where the big windows gave a good view of the neighbourhood, and armed with torches and whistles. However, despite brave expectations, nothing untoward happened.

Out -of school activities had meanwhile increased, including regular weekend hikes into Cheshire or Derbyshire with the Guides, Guide camps during the summer holidays, and, eventually, summer weeks spent picking potatoes down in Devon or fruit in Worcestershire. Daringly, some friends and I took to hitch-hiking - then a new response to wartime travel difficulties 鈥� when visiting different Youth Hostels for cheap holidays in Staffordshire, the Cotswolds or the Lake District.

Cultural life locally had been enriched by the temporary residency by the Halle Orchestra at the Odeon cinema in West Didsbury which was within walking distance from my house, while surviving cinemas, concert halls and theatres in the city centre, remained open and functioning. The ritual of the National Anthem played at the beginning or end of any performance, necessitating everyone standing in silence, was enhanced by larger than life pictures of Roosevelt or 鈥淯ncle鈥� Joe Stalin smiling wolfishly down onto cinema audiences. When on leave, my sister would visit the Ritz ballroom, where she met up with American servicemen coming into town from in Warrington to dance to the music of Glenn Miller and others. I myself learnt how to jitterbug and jive at the ripe old age of fifteen when invited to the Country Club by older friends.

I also remember lunchtime concerts at the Houldsworth Hall by Moseiwitch, the famous pianist, also by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, that the school encouraged those of us who were studying music to attend. There were theatre visits too, to see Donald Wolfit in 鈥淭he Merchant of Venice鈥� and 鈥淥thello鈥�, for example. A highlight for me in my mid-teens was being selected by the Headmistress to go down to London and attend a concert at the Albert Hall as a guest of the French authorities and organisers in London in honour of French Resistance 鈥� an experience that was quite overwhelming.

On a popular level, of course, we had virtually sung our way through hardships and shortages of all kinds with the help of songs ranging from the early ones like 鈥淲e鈥檙e Going to Hang out our Washing on the Siegfried Line鈥� (one of my favourites), through 鈥淚 Don鈥檛 want to Set the World on Fire鈥� to 鈥� We鈥檒l Meet Again鈥� and dozens more. Comedy shows on the radio were staple fare, and provided a stock of catchphrases that everyone recognised and took into daily life. Another regular treat was the weekly broadcast by the Brains Trust 鈥� really a formative influence for debate and discussion, with its own familiar tags, whether Professor Joad鈥檚 鈥淚t depends what you mean by ...鈥� or Commander Campbell鈥檚 鈥淲hen I was in Patagonia ...鈥� While regular churchgoing reinforced our sense of community, I don鈥檛 recall much reference to the war as such, but at school, we were introduced to the poem by A.H.Clough, which Churchill had dramatically quoted in one of his speeches to the nation, beginning 鈥淪ay not the struggle nought availeth,鈥� and ending, 鈥淏ut westward, look, the land is bright!鈥�, and instructed to learn it. Even more contemporary, one of my set books for my final Higher School Certificate in French between 1944 and 鈥�45 was 鈥淟e Silence de la Mer鈥� by Vercors 鈥� the nickname of one of the French Maquis, and written in the very heat of war, unlike all other school texts.

Towards the end of the war, our house had to accommodate my Grandmother and two
young cousins from London, who were sent to stay with us when the V1 and V2 rockets began to be fired over London. Hitler hoped that these missiles, which dropped from the skies without any warning signs, would finally succeed in demoralising the population, and they were indeed weapons not just of destruction but of terror, for no protection seemed possible against them. However, although my cousins stayed with us until the danger had passed, my Grandmother could not settle and returned to London after several weeks.

Finally the war drew to a close. I was seventeen, and taking my Higher School Certificate exams in the months after D-Day in 1945. I remember feeling sad on VE Day and finding it hard to join in the celebrations, with personal feelings of loss surging up. The past could not be undone, and the terrible waste and sufferungs of the war years could not be forgotten, even though I and my schoolmates had come off lightly compared with others. Weeks passed, and I succeeded in gaining a scholarship from the benevolent Manchester Education Committee for University or equivalent tuition, just after the war鈥檚 final ending. How impoverished Britain could afford the college fees and the many maintenance grants for students at that time, when the highly affluent country of today cannot, remains something of a mystery to me, even allowing for the smaller percentage of applicants at that time. The austerities of wartime with regard to food, clothing, house fuel, petrol, travel restrictions, housing provision, bomb damage repairs and industrial redevelopment had been severe, and were to remain so for several peacetime years. I and my schoolfriends were aware that in many ways we had experienced deprivations of a kind that many of our parents had not had to go through in their own childhoods. But we also knew something of the 鈥榖ad old days鈥� of the Thirties and were conscious of a new egalitarianism, precisely through rationing, new jobs for women, new departures in education and so on. Most of us shared the general passionate desire for a new social justice that would right the wrongs of the years leading up to the year the war ended. Some of us supported the Commonwealth Party, recently formed by Sir Richard Acland, but our hopes for its success were disappointed.

In contrast to today鈥檚 children, we had never had much opportunity for making choices, whether in clothes, food, or creative activities. Furthermore, the habits of repressing personal feelings, of putting up with how things were, of believing that what the authorities said and did was right, can be seen as moulding us into being too passive and conformist in many ways. Yet our war years also taught us to be patient, compassionate and stoical, to keep a sense of humour and not to be greedy. Our clothes might be patched and darned, our personal possessions minimal, but we felt we could trust other people, and valued their kindness when nearly everyone had so little. There was a sense of solidarity and national feeling, while encounters with so many victims and fighters from abroad had spread a much greater acceptance of other countries, other manners. Above all, perhaps, we had learnt to become moderately self-reliant and 鈥� no matter what 鈥� to remain hopeful.

Maryan Trevor

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