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FINAL YEARS

Air raids provided further distractions at school. In truth Cheltenham was very lucky. Forty miles north was Birmingham and Coventry; thirty eight miles south was Bristol. All were pounded. The sirens wailed in Cheltenham but usually because the Luftwaffe was on its way to those industrially important cities. One night, for reasons unknown – perhaps they had lost their way – the German Air Force decided to have a go at Cheltenham.

It was, in fact, a legitimate target. Some shops in the High Street were closed and converted into small factories producing, we were told by gossips in hushed voices, aircraft parts. Dowty equipment making undercarriages was on the edge of the town and to the south four miles away in Brockworth the first jet fighter later to go into service with the R.A.F., the Meteor, was being developed. The so-called Baedecker raids on tourist cities like Bath did not apply to Cheltenham for some reason.

That particular raid was not a heavy one. It lasted for about an hour and a half I suppose. My mother sat in our living room as near to the centre dividing the semis as she could. That, we had been told, was the safest part of any house in an air raid. We had no Andersen shelter in the garden but our next door neighbour did. A hole about three or four deep was dug, wooden frame work installed to prevent cane is and a corrugated iron roof fitted overall. They would withstand blast but hardly survive a direct hit. Still, it was a little better than having a house collapsing around you. Our neighbour was the neatest of men and his shelter was not flooded or cluttered as a storage space with unwanted detritus. Most others were as the war went on. Nor did we have a heavy metal living room table of, we were told, reinforced steel under which we could shelter . They were clumsy and not very pretty and not many people used them though they were readily available in the first months of the war.

My mother was frightened. The noise was tremendous; anti-aircraft guns blasting shells into the sky, the whistle of bombs then their explosions – though the nearest bomb that dropped near us was at least 250 yards away -,
and the constant thrum thrum of Dornier bombers, easily recognisable by their throbbing engines. Of course she was frightened. I, on the other hand, was more frightened of my Maths master and the blasting I would get for not producing my homework the next day. I think I lacked a certain sense of proportion.

In time the all clear was sounded. With overwhelming relief from my mother and satisfaction from me at having finished my homework we went to bed.

In the morning I cycled to school. The roads were heavily littered with shrapnel from bombs and AA shell fire so I picked up a few for my collection. Our nearest bomb had just managed to avoid hitting a railway bridge nearby and even the railway. That was lucky. A road bridge over a railway elsewhere in town had had a direct hit. It wasn’t replaced until the late ‘forties and caused huge diversions for traffic throughout the war.

I arrived at school to find that I had wasted my time with homework. A land mine had destroyed Stoneville Street near the gasworks. Most of the ground floor classrooms were filled with the resulting homeless families. I never knew how many had been killed. But how could there not have been substantial fatal casualties?

A teacher was waiting for us pupils to arrive and we were told to go home. There would be no lessons today. But if any of us wanted to volunteer to help the families we would be welcome. I went in and spent the day clearing desks to one side, handing out blankets, trestle beds, cups of tea, as bewildered as those distressed families. It was my first contact with what the reality of war could hand out and it shook me. I was twelve years old by now and probably not the most sensitive of boys but it made me realise how lucky my mother and I were not to have suffered this disaster and be among those unfortunates, or even to be lying under the rubble of our little semi, bodies crushed and dead. Of course we were lucky.

The threat in the months to come of raids like that produced, I would guess, a new development in our school life. A notice went up asking for volunteers for fire watching duties. Eight boys under a member of staff would stay in the school overnight and working a roster each boy would stay awake for an hour to raise the alarm if necessary. Blankets and mattresses would be available on the stage of the school hall so that we could sleep. The master kipped down in the Head’s study. I volunteered.

We were given stirrup pumps and shown how to use them. We were shown where buckets of sand could be found. And we knew where the water supply was. The intention was that we should deal with incendiary bombs. The Luftwaffe dropped such bombs before the heavy bombers with the powerful high explosives followed on. The intention, pretty obviously, was to start a series of fires so that the bomber pilots could make out targets in the light thrown by the blazes. We were meant to put the incendaries out before that could happen.

Well, the school premises were large and sprawling. It was a two storied affair in the centre of the town and built in the 19th. century of brick and a great deal of wood. What we could have done in a determined raid, God only knows. Incendiaries were only heavy enough to crash through a roof and, the fall broken, unlikely to drop through a ceiling. A fire in the lofts would have remained undetected until it was too late. Furthermore it was the best part of a hundred yards from the frontage on the High Street to the back entrance of the school. Eight boys under a master, despite youthful energy and pumping adrenaline, would have been hard put to it to cover all the premises, upstairs and down, before serious fires had taken hold.

At the time I am quite sure none of this crossed my mind or that of my colleagues. The staff member is another matter. With hindsight it doesn’t take imagination to know that he had a heavy responsibility and not only in terms of saving the building. Eight heroic schoolboys have to be returned in one piece to proud parents. Masters would have been very aware of just how inadequate we were likely to be. None of them in my presence expressed that concern though I daresay a few thoughts on the matter were exchanged in the staffroom. But for us boys it was something quite different.

For a start we could congratulate ourselves for pulling our weight for the war effort. No medals, perhaps, but we had more than enough resulting self-esteem to compensate. Adolf Schickelgrüber – as Churchill delghted in calling the Führer - and his lot wouldn’t have much chance while we were around. After all we were heroes, weren’t we? Becomingly modest with it, true, but all the same...

Then there was the excitement of spending the night in premises we only occupied during the day.

We all, as adults too, see familiar places taking on new characteristics when circumstances change. Even when lessons are taking place and there is quiet – there was disciplined quiet in schools at that time – there is always an almost tangible Presence of 600 boys. It’s a hum, an ambience, an awareness of supressed energies. Even after teaching hours because of detentions or school extra-mural activities there is for a time something of that Presence. But through the night everything was silent and dormant. Most of the school in darkness, the only light was to be found in the Head’s study and the school hall. Everything familiar was now strange and new and a little eerie. It was all very very different. During one’s hour awake on duty watch the atmosphere changed quite dramatically. Alone and with a degree of responsibility I can remember now more than sixty years later, the combination of thrill and tension.

As the threat of raids grew less we grew used to it all, as one does, and sometimes I would go out onto the High Street in the blackout just to make the time of duty go faster. The first time I did it I’d never seen the centre of Cheltenham in the middle of the night. That too of course had a strangeness and a harmless thrill about it. Once I was stopped by a middle-aged and very large policeman. Hadn’t I got a home to go to? With what must have been unmistakable pride I told him what I was doing. The mood changed at once and we became allies – at least, in my eyes – doing our duty without fuss. I suppose the pretensions of extreme youth can be excused - sometimes.

However, the most important experience was the relationship with the duty master. In the thirties the authority of a teacher vis a vis pupils was rarely questioned. With one or two exceptions the staff were treated with respect, at least outwardly. Only those replacements who were inadequate for the job had problems. Because of my own upbringing at home my attitude towards any master placed them almost on a non-human pedestal. For me they were other beings.

Suddenly, we boys would be sitting in the early evening drinking tea and chatting with a man who, from being, as an example, something of a martinet and to be feared, became a human being. For those who have never been over-awed by authority no doubt it was natural. For me, with Victorian parents whose view of society was made up of a system built on a hierachical, and unquestioning conviction, this was something of a revelation. From that time on I knew that knowing one’s place and sticking to it was not necessarily a Good Thing. The class structure of the time had deep roots. Today’s young people aren’t hampered with this kind of attitude. It is far healthier. It would be too strong to say that the experience fundamentally changed my life yet I know that from those insignificant beginnings grew the belief that everyone should be accepted for what they are and not where they come from.

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