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My career at Dulwich College started and might have finished with a bang. The night before term was due to start a bomb fell in the school grounds. It was not large compared with what was to follow, and the only damage was a hole in the cricket field; but we were told to stay at home while it was decided whether the school should re-open in London at all.
Eventually we were summoned to start a month later, about 300 in number, whereas the peacetime roll had been three times that. For the first two years time was divided between classrooms and shelters and journeys between. Nevertheless a full schedule of teaching and sport was maintained, while the Junior Training Corps paraded and practised military functions regularly; but after-school activities were curtailed.

One master, whose room was on the top floor of the main building, unwisely (and unnecessarily —the siren was quite near and very loud) told his classes that as he was a little deaf they should tell him if they heard the air raid warning. It was surprising what sounds could be mistaken for a siren, the mistake being discovered only when we reached the basement shelters and found ourselves alone.

At the end of 1942 my class were asked each to write a poem, the best to be selected by a vote of the class.
They were nearly all on war themes. My formal ode in praise of the defenders of Stalingrad came second to a racy composition on HMS Cossack’s pursuit of the Altmark prison ship. It’s author was R.A. (Bob) Monkhouse, whose creative talents won him wider fame later.
He and I were involved with others in producing an informal magazine. Its contents included a serial story set in occupied France relating the exploits of a schoolboy who was helping the Resistance. We wrote instalments in turn, and each tried to leave the hero in a desperate predicament and see how the next writer got him out of it. This was not really difficult, as we were allowed to assume that all Germans were idiots.

It was about this time that two pigs joined the school. They were cared for by members of the staff and comfortably housed in a remote corner of the grounds, where they helped to dispose of waste from the kitchens while preparing to make their contribution to the nation’s meat supply. Such local #pig clubs’ were officially recognised by the government and encouraged along with the keeping of chickens.

I sat for the General School Certificate in 1944.
It came shortly after my Confirmation in the School Chapel, which was a short service with a limited congregation. It had been postponed from its scheduled date, which fell in London's week of shock and uncertainty when the first V1s arrived. It was soon accepted that nothing could be done to stop most of them and meanwhile life must go on.
A week before the exams were due to start a V1 landed on the school. It destroyed only a few classrooms and some outbuildings, but the main buildings were temporarily unusable.
To an outdoor Assembly the Master announced that term was over for all but the examinees, and that arrangements had been made for them to do their exams in the shelters of a neighbouring school. The Examination Board had kindly arranged that to hasten the dispersion of pupils the exams would start earlier, with the papers from the last three days brought forward to the beginning. This played havoc with revision plans.
We went ahead with the exam in very cramped conditions which were as difficult for the invigilators as for the students. Meanwhile outside there was the occasional crump of bombs, near and far.
I still recall one such crump during a maths paper; it seemed just the direction and distance of home. After a pause I hoped not and returned to the paper. We were used to setting out in the morning not knowing whether home would still be there when returned, and leaving school each evening not knowing whether it would be there next day. But life must go on.

21st century readers of this archive might be expecting something about ‘trauma counselling’. As far as I know it had not been invented, though I suppose there was psychiatric help in extreme cases. We wee just expected to get on with things after each shock and be ready for the next one.
I recall an occasion when a V1 flying bomb landed on the other side of the sports field behind our house and blew out all our windows at the back. Having extricated myself from a glass-strewn bed and helped to clear up while listening to reports of the rescue work going on a few hundred yards away, I arrived at school tired and late.
‘Counselling’ by the master who took charge of late arrivals went as follows: ‘Why are you late?’ ‘We had a bomb near us last night, Sir, and I was very tired.’ ‘So what. I had a-bomb near me, and I’ve been here an hour.’ He lived a few streets from me and meant the same bomb. I might have replied, ‘I know you did; but it was a lot nearer to me than it was to you.’
My form master was a bit more sympathetic, in a British sort of way.
We were all in it together. We talked together, sometimes moaned together, frequently laughed together, occasionally mourned together; thus we were ‘counselling’ each other.

The V1s and V2s continued to fall indiscriminately and unpredictably on south London until almost the end of the European war. For us the accounts of the fighting on the Continent were a backdrop to events nearer home. Our constant, though seldom spoken, question was ‘When are they going to knock out the sites that are sending these things over?’ It didn’t happen until the virtual collapse of Germany.

One day in the Spring of 1945 there was a very loud bang which we recognised as a V2 rocket as it announced its supersonic descent after it arrived and we felt tremors in the ground and in the air.
Having made sure we and the building we were in were intact we went outside to look for the familiar column of smoke and debris. We saw it about a mile to the south, where it appeared to have disturbed a large flock of birds. Then we realised they were sheets of paper carried on the blast and the wind and settling around us in trees and on roofs and gardens. The rocket had landed on a printing works.

The trials and privations of war had their compensations. In the blackout on a quiet cloudless night we were able to see, study and enjoy the stars in all their glory.

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