大象传媒

Wartime memories of my childhood in Bedford Part Two 鈥� Schooldays at Bedford Modern School and holidays.

Part two of an oral history interview with Mr. John Vandepeer Clarke conducted by Ann Hagen on behalf of Bedford Museum.

鈥淎t school during wartime we had much more spartan regime I think than before the war. But it was only gradually introduced because, for example, important things like the Tuck Shop where you could buy sweets and chocolate at the School was well stocked up in the first few months at the beginning of the war. So it was only gradually that the pain of deprivation from familiar things like bananas and oranges and so on really hit home. But quite apart from that life was extremely disciplined at Bedford School in those days. We were a public school with a long tradition, founded in 1552, and everybody was very carefully monitored and looked after but it was a very busy school regime. We would start as usual as most schools at about 9 o鈥檆lock in the morning. I was a 鈥榙ay boy鈥� and I should say that 30-40% of the boys at the school were in boarding houses grouped around the School Campus. I was one of the 鈥榙ay boys鈥� at the school and my brothers subsequently went to Bedford School. The typical school day would be arriving at school just before 9 o鈥檆lock, two hours in the morning period, then break for 20 minutes. This was not an uncontrolled sort of break but was very disciplined in that we were marched out by Forms and were taken by senior boys who were either Monitors or Options, in other words, Prefects, either senior or junior in status, to do physical exercises. PE, very vigorously for about a quarter of an hour which left us about five minutes to chat with friends and then back to work for the second half of the morning session. Then we had prayers and having had Morning Assembly first of all we would have brief prayers at 1 o鈥檆lock and then go home if we were living close enough, we could go home for our lunch and be back within the hour. In the afternoons we had on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we had further school lessons until about 4 o鈥檆lock.

But on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, these were Games days. And the usual sort of regime with rugger in the winter months, rowing in the winter months and in the summer too and cricket in the summer with a whole host of minor sports which everyone was supposed to enjoy and many people did. I particularly enjoyed playing 鈥楩ives鈥� but apart from that there were things like gymnastics, boxing and so on as extra curriculum things. You were expected to do your ordinary games and then in addition to that you were normally expected to take part in some secondary sport. So sport was a very important part of the Bedford School experience.

We also, as I got further up the school, we found ourselves in the JTC, that鈥檚 the Junior Training Corp which was originally, in the First World War, had been called the Officer Training Corps and then it was the Junior Training Corps and later on I believe it was given another name. We were in the JTC and then I found an opportunity to escape from the JTC which meant that we had in the JTC Regular Army training under the auspices of Sergeant Majors who were on the school staff. I found that I was able, during the latter part of the war, to transfer to the ATC, the Air Training Corps which was slightly less military and more interesting because we had the occasional opportunity of having a flight in the Royal Air Force planes at nearby aerodromes either at Henlow or Cranfield. I enjoyed a couple of very nice trips in Avro bi-planes. As one of the perks of belonging to the ATC we were supposed to know all about aeroplanes and identification and so on; I don鈥檛 think any of us got terribly good at it but it was preferable to being in khaki. One thing I was very pleased that I did not have to do in the ATC and that was participate on the wrong part of a group which went out to Cranfield and we were split up for flight experience. We were split into two groups, this was probably 1945, and half of us went up in a perfectly innocuous bi-plane and I was allocated as part of that group. I was very pleased I was on that side because the others were invited to, or told, to take their places in a glider and we watched the glider being towed up. That was alright but when it came down we were astonished to see the glider, detached of course from the towing aircraft, coming down at an angle of about 45潞 degrees at great speed until it was about 20 feet above the ground, it suddenly flattened out and it landed. I鈥檓 afraid that my friends who had drawn the wrong ticket came out looking extremely green! Laughter! As a result I was very pleased that I had not had to participate in glider training. I think this was a normal landing technique. They gathered enough speed to come down at the right angle. Anyway we watched horror stricken as this thing came down, we thought all our friends had had it. A view that was much more intensely felt by those on the glider!

Our holidays in the war years were necessarily not the same sort of pattern as before the war. We had to spend time in Bedfordshire primarily. We had School Camps as I got into the upper part of the school and we had a very enjoyable time harvesting one summer (about 1942 or 1943) in Stewartby at the Brick Works. In their model village at Stewartby they had a few spare empty houses and we were accommodated there and well fed in the London Brick Works canteen these were all very new buildings at that time because the estate was only built in the 1930s. We were taken out on trucks to help bring in the harvest, stooking and so on in the nearby farms which were in fact in the ownership of the Brick Company which had valuable resources of clay for brick making underneath them. At that time the London Brick Company had no need or intention to obtain. They had acquired a whole series of farms in this clay bearing area so that for future development they could get their clay for making bricks. I well remember our lunches were uniformly bread and dripping throughout the three weeks I think of our time in harvesting.

Another year - finally in 1944 we went to a much more interesting place in many ways, which was Ledbury in Herefordshire where we were again harvesting but this time plum harvesting and apple harvesting from the fruit crops in the area. These were school parties that were taken out and we camped and had a wonderful time working in the orchards during the day and trying not to get to badly stung by wasps and relaxing in the evenings going out for walks in the beautiful countryside there. So these were really the main holidays that were organised.

But again as I reached the age of about 15 or 16 we used our cycles a great deal. All our 鈥榙ay boys鈥� in Bedford had cycles because it was very much a town full of cyclists, far more than today. We used to go on holiday with tents and on one occasion, the first time in 1944, we, I and a friend in the Upper School, in September of 1944 we cycled from Bedford up through the Fens to Kings Lynn. And then round the Norfolk coast down as far as into Suffolk and as far as Aldeburgh. I remember the joy of having our first swim in the sea after five years, in Cromer. And another one at Happisburgh a few miles down the coast where you could bathe on a hundred yard stretch between the mined sections of the beaches; as long as you didn鈥檛 stray you were alright. On the way back through the beautiful Suffolk countryside we saw the most remarkable sight which was hosts and hosts of gliders being towed for the Arnhem landings in Holland. We didn鈥檛 know where they were going but it was obvious that there was an extraordinarily large operation taking place. We cycled along with our heads in the air, likely to bump into other things because we were constantly looking up to see another team of planes with gliders behind them, hundreds and hundreds of gliders over this Sunday morning. The whole session took three or four hours to pass and it really was an extremely memorable sight.

Then also the following year with a party of about three other school friends we cycled all the way round Wales. Going from Bedford to the Severn up through wild Wales, up the course of the Wye up to near Snowdon. We then climbed Snowdon, going inadvertently across a live firing range which we didn鈥檛 really realise it was until we came back again and found that the place that we had crossed at the foot of the mountain was littered with cartridges. Then cycling back through North Wales in beautiful weather and then through the lovely orchard country of Worcestershire and back to Bedford.鈥�

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