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SCHOOLBOYS’ MEMORIES OF WORLD WAR II — PART THREE

3. FLYING BOMBS

A few days after D-day the flying bombs started. They interrupted College activities seriously. It was soon apparent that with V1s coming over irregularly throughout the day normal classes were impossible.

I was in Syntax and therefore doing final revision before School Certificate. This meant that I worked mainly at home coming into school once or twice a week. The big problem was where the exams were to be held. The solution devised by the Jesuits was characteristically thorough. All examinees both School and Higher Certificates plus masters would travel up to Mount St Marys in Derbyshire, to which we had been invited by the Rector. There were fifty or so of us. The Mount seemed to cope without great difficulty though given rationing (I assume we had to take up our ration books) and other wartime exigencies we must have been a big problem. I can recall that we slept in an enormous dormitory. We mixed in chapel and at meals with Mount boys and I remember coming home wearing a Mount tie which I had swapped for my own.

It was a completely new experience to travel to the north, as I had previously never been north of Cambridge. On the train up one boy, Peter Collins, asserted that we would at some point run into an industrial haze and might well not see the sun again before our return. It did however make a strong impression on me to descend at Sheffield and to look round and see dozens of tall smoking chimneys. Hitherto the four at Battersea power station were my benchmark.

The Jesuits were concerned that we should make the most of our visit to the industrial north. On afternoons when we had no exams it was arranged for groups of us to visit a small ironworks and witness the tapping of the foundry and the molten iron flowing into the moulds and appreciate why it was called pig-iron. We also went down a small mine in Renishaw (did it belong to the Sitwells?). I mainly remember the pit ponies.

On the train back to London I had to sit in the corridor on my case. James Colliston sat on the other end of it. We speculated whether the harvest camp would go ahead because of the buzzbombs.

4. MORNING PRAYERS AND THE KATYN MASSACRE

Classes started at 9.30 a.m. Boys arriving early were from 9 a.m. onwards shepherded into ‘Morning Studies’. These were held in the Figures classrooms and were supervised by prefects. In theory this time was intended for revision and not for doing homework, though in fact many did just that. At 9.20 we all assembled in the chapel for morning prayers, after which we went to our classrooms.

This assembly in chapel was an opportunity to make general announcements. Occasionally Fr. Dowling the Prefect General would come forward, usually to take us to task for unsatisfactory conduct such as failure to wear caps or being spotted on the Common during school hours.

Very rarely it was Fr. Sinnott. When he appeared, it was serious. One morning in 1943 he said that he had something very important to tell us. He then recounted the massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn forest by the Russians. He said that when the news broke there might be attempts to blame the Germans because it was they who had discovered the bodies (at Nuremberg the issue was fudged). He wanted us to know the truth. How he had learned this I never knew, though of course there were over 30,000 Jesuits all over Europe.

5. HARVEST CAMPS

DAVID RICHARDSON

During the war holidays involving travel were difficult or impossible. The coast of course was out of bounds. Camping was very popular. As a way of promoting the war effort the Government encouraged harvest camps. The Government (I assume) provided the site and the equipment (bell tents, marquees, camp furniture and cooking facilities) and contacts with farmers needing labour. The camps lasted for six weeks divided into three two week sessions. Boys opted for one or more sessions. A charge was made for food which was (I think) 30 shillings per session.

Boys attended the camps either as orderlies or workers. Boys under 14 came as orderlies mainly to help with kitchen work: spud bashing, washing up pots, shopping with Fr. Sinnott. Boys over 14 worked on the farms. The work in August was: hoeing lines of vegetables (easy but mindlessly boring), stooking (quite hard work, very rough on the forearms especially if there were thistles, and boring), carting (hard work but great fun especially if one was in the cart stacking the sheaves), and stack building (again hard work but fun). This was farming before combine harvesters.

The camp was run by the Jays who did the cooking. John Sinnott in khaki shorts was a surprisingly good cook. James Colliston sauntered round the camp finding everything ‘ludicrous’. Jimmy Lalor made delicious toffee apples. Jack Strachan got very impatient with the antediluvian cooking stove; we could believe the story that he had spent time at sea. David Hoy having acquired a dead rabbit (doubtless cornered as the reaper drove it into the diminishing area of corn at the centre of the field) enthralled us with an impromptu dissection of the corpse on a table in the marquee. I was rather disconcerted when it dawned on me that the knife he was using was mine (we had to bring our own cutlery). Hoy assured me that I only had to give it a good wash.

The first camp I went to was at Nohome Farm on Walton Downs south of Epsom. One evening I was leaving the unsalubrious latrines on the slope to the south of the camp site, when looking down towards the camp I saw flames appearing from one of the tents. I raced down; but other people had also spotted the fire and raised the alarm. After it was put out, David Hoy closely inspected the burnt out tent but was unable to say what caused it. A cigarette was generally blamed. This camp was much enlivened by Polimeni (a distant cousin of the Hampshires) who revealed unsuspected talent as a Jazz drummer.

From 1944 onwards the camps were sited in Kidbrook Park just south of Forest Row. There was a question mark over the 1944 camp as the V1s were still coming in at frequent intervals. They were flying over near to Forest Row but the main area for attempts to shoot them down was rather to the north. It was finally agreed that the camp would go ahead provided parents signified their specific consent. I recall cycling down to camp through the barrage balloons near Horley and East Grinstead.

My most powerful memory from the 1945 camp was going into Forest Row one morning to buy a newspaper and reading that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. There was immediate debate whether the war against Japan was over.

Work started at 8 a.m. and finished at 5 p.m. with an hour for lunch. We were paid to the best of my recollection 6d per hour (about 50p) until age 16 and 8d per hour thereafter. The best deal we ever did was at the Wych Cross Hotel (a couple of miles south of Forest Row and still there). There was a market garden behind the hotel and the manager had asked for a number of boys. To avoid having to supervise us, I suppose, the manager took us to an area of blackcurrant bushes badly in need of weeding and proposed that we weed them at a piece rate of £1 a row. The job looked unpromising and everybody hated weeding/hoeing. However we had little choice and set to. We managed to do a row each in a long day. This lasted only two days. The manager scrutinised our work meticulously but, unable to fault it, had to pay up. £1 per day was nearly four times the normal earnings (8 times 8d). I imagine he viewed the productivity of his usual workforce in a different light thereafter. I had to work very hard to keep anywhere near Willy and Don who were both far stronger than I was. I was not sorry that we went to other work as after two days my hands were a mass of blisters. I had no problem however in taking hold of my earnings.

In the later camps we found other workers on the farms: girls from the Women’s Land Army and Italian prisoners of war. It was a novel experience being in contact with such exotic creatures but no more. The girls and the Italians found each other far more interesting.

ALAN WATERS

In the August of 1940, the College set up a harvest/farming camp with Surrey War Ag. near Haslemere, on Blackdown Hill. Sharing a miniscule hiking tent with Cliff Climpson, we were woken early one sunny morning by the sound of planes and distant explosions. We were witnessing one of the first Luftwaffe daylight raids on the Aldershot/Farnborough area. The dive-bombing of the JU 87s was clearly visible in the bright sunshine. I wrote soon after to John Mitchell whose father worked for a US automotive company and was transferred back to Indianapolis in late 1939. A few weeks later John sent me a cutting from his local Indianapolis newspaper which had reproduced my letter in full under the headline ‘Schoolboy watches dive bombing’.

It was after the Shorncliffe P.T.I. course in 1943 that many of us went to the College harvest camp on Epsom Downs, on Stanley Wootton’s farm at Langley Bottom. There we lived in army bell tents, earned 4 (old) pence/hour for our work. It was great, loading corn sheaves on to wagons, building corn stacks — and were we fit ! Fr. Sinnott ran this camp and proved himself an enthusiastic and competent cook.

World War II (1939-45) certainly brought about many changes and one introduction was the annual Farm Camp. Parents were invited to donate tinned food (quite a sacrifice) and those of us who volunteered ‘worked on the land’ during the summer holidays in various locations over the years - Langley Bottom, Epsom on the farm of a race-horse owner/trainer, Haslemere and Forest Row. I seem to remember that Fr. David Hoy (probably a Scholastic then) was in charge on one occasion but I am sure that Fr. Sinnott himself had an important role in the organization of the camps and may well have accompanied us. The Haslemere camp was memorable for the dreadful weather, the muddy conditions and the evening queue at the public toilets in Haslemere which were luxurious in comparison to what was on offer at the camp! There was one occasion when it was left to me to serve to a sub-group of rather reluctant young farm workers desperately trying to find adequate shelter from the pouring rain, a midday meal of bread, sardines and honey. The only consolation was that when we were able to show some results from our labours there was a small amount of pay in return.

FROM THE MAGAZINE

March 1941

Rain, rain, and still more rain ! St. Swithin was at the very top of his form throughout the four weeks we spent under canvas. But it is pleasing to think that on at least two Sundays he yielded to Higher Authority and observed the Day of Rest. But because it rained so dis-spiritingly it must not be thought that the camp was not enjoyable. Far from it ! We enjoyed it so much that some more venturesome or more hardened campaigners stayed on for a fortnight beyond the previously arranged two weeks. Everything considered - weather, war, and work - we had as good a time as was humanly possible. Trust boys for that !

The camp consisted, at its ‘peak’ period, of just on sixty boys. The vast majority of these went ‘on the land,’ getting work - and pay - as they could from the farmers of the district. And I think that there were few who were not at least reasonably satisfied with the extent to which the primary object of the camp was attained. And while speaking of these workers, whose duties varied from taking up turnips to digging ditches or clearing a field which had not been ploughed for forty-odd years, mention must definitely be made of those dozen or so smaller lads who did all the work in and around the camp itself.

As I said above, some fifteen of us stayed on for another two weeks under canvas. This time was spent at Churt on Mr. Lloyd George’s estate there. And the only fault I had to find with our position there was that I had to traverse two miles solidly uphill before reaching the shops. Luckily for them, that did not concern the others much. The weather there was certainly considerably better than at Haslemere, but even so, the rain was still going strong. We even had to pitch our tents, on the first afternoon there, in a deluge of rain.. No joke, we can tell you ! But we enjoyed it quite as much as at Haslemere, perhaps even more so, if I may say that without offence.

After the return from camp, Fr. Sinnott received the following letter from Mr. Lloyd George:

The Office of The Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd George, O.M., M.P.
Bron-y-de, Churt, Surrey.
Sept. 4th, 1941.
Dear Sir,

1 should like to send you a word of thanks for allowing your boys to come and help me on my farm. I should be glad also if you would convey to the boys my thanks for their timely assist¬ance. They worked extremely well and were very valuable to the farm in help¬ing to bring in some of the produce. But for them we should have been in great difficulties, and I was sorry they had to leave when they did.

Yours sincerely, D. Lloyd George.

At the peace-time camp, food of all sorts was easily obtainable in unlimited quantities; this time, amidst war-time regulations, we each had to bring our own supplies of rationed commodities, and such food as we had to buy could only be obtained in limited amounts.
Apart from the food, the only other indication of the war was an air raid warning which we had and an odd Jerry plane which came over to interrupt our slumbers - or perhaps I should say 'the others' slumbers', for I myself can sleep through any raid !

December 1942

To meet the great demand for labour, the camp had been planned to run for six or seven weeks, and for the greater part of the time there was ample work for all. At first the grain harvest was held up by the weather, and there were some who soon learned to hate the sight of a field of cabbages or a hoe. Later, when the time came for cutting, there was more than enough work for all. Then developed a race between workers and weather. The latter was far from settled, and any bright period between the showers had to be seized and utilised, if only the sun was strong enough to dry the sodden sheaves. Any time now was work time. Hours stretched from nine or ten o’clock in the morning until nine at night, and dinner became a clandestine meal eaten in a dimly lit and imper¬fectly blacked-out marquee. Indeed, when the camp finally broke up, a bare week before the school reopened, volunteers were asked to stay on as there was still much work to be done.

This is the third consecutive year that the College has camped in the summer, and by all the signs the enterprise is becoming more rather than less popular. Each year, however, the problems of organisation do not become easier; each year there are new limitations of transport, new food restrictions, new registrations, coupons, points and vouchers, to manage, which is no doubt child’s play to the skilled housewife, but a nightmare to the uninitiated schoolmaster. Therefore, a debt of grati¬tude is due to all who helped in the organisation and running of the camp and, above all, to Fr. Sinnott, without whose energy and initiative no camp would have been possible. We hope that he will find recompense for his labours in the thought that the College has been able to play some part in the important work of garnering this year’s record-breaking harvest.

1944-1946

In the summers of 1944 and 1945 Harvest Camps were conducted at Forest Row, Sussex, under the auspices of the East Sussex War Agricultural Executive Committee. An excel¬lent site was secured in the grounds of Kidbrooke Hall only a quarter of a mile from the centre of the village, so that catering arrangements were considerably easier than they had been at our previous camps on Epsom Downs and at Haslemere. Both camps lasted for six weeks, and were thoroughly enjoyed by all concerned. The 1945 camp was made particularly interesting, as Forest Row lay dead in the track of the flying-bombs, and the London Balloon Barrage stretched to north¬wards at a distance of no more than three miles, the result being that the nights provided numer¬ous and spectacular pyrotechnic displays.

It is worth noting that the College boys manned Harvest Camps for each of the six years of the War.

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