Figure 1.--Here is a photograph of me taken about 1936. I have very few pictures of me as a child, for from the age of 4 years six months to 10 years six months we were in the midst of The World War II with all its difficulties. Here I am sometime before my second birthday.

Here is a photograph of me taken about 1936. I have very few pictures of me as a child, for from the age of 4yrs six months to 10yrs six months we were in the midst of The World War II with all its difficulties. Curiously, I feel rather proud of the fact that I lived through those momentous years, but then, due to my tender years I was saved from a full knowledge of what was actually going on, I think that if I really been aware of the situation I would have become mentally unstable.

Early Years

My family is from Sheffield & I was born there in 1935. It seems that my father’s business was affected by the depression and he eventually found another business in Bexley which is 13 miles S.E. of London. We moved to Bexley when I was 18 months old and I later started school there.

World War II

Just before I started school World War II came upon us, and Bexley was right on the flight path of the German bombers. After a near miss when a bomb, which should by rights have landed on our house, wobbled and hit a bungalow on the opposite side of the road, we decided to rejoin our family in Sheffield. We had just settled in with our relations when Sheffield was attacked on the 12th & 15th of December 1940. My family was extremely lucky during the war, not one of our homes was damaged and none of our family members was injured or killed, but one of my Mother’s cousins was captured by the Germans.

I do remember handling shrapnel, but once we got away from the London area things were much more peaceful, in any case, my family saw to it that all their children were as protected from the nastiness as possible, and I cannot remember discussing the war with my school mates. I cannot remember any of my teachers discussing the war with us, all my information came from radio broadcasts that I listened to at home. I must have heard Winston Churchill on the radio at some time or other, but, my age being what it was, what he was saying passed over my head. While in the London area we did see the dog fights and saw planes shot down. At Bexley we had an Anderson shelter, that is, one that was erected in a hole dug out in the garden and then covered over with earth & grass, in fact these shelters were known as, Dug Outs” In Sheffield, we had our cellar reinforced. As I mentioned last time, Sheffield was bombed but twice and then left alone, which is surprising considering its industrial importance. Towards the end of the war we had a visitation from some flying bombs, which is again surprising for these weapons were mainly targeted on London. Sheffield is 160 miles north of London and so must have been on the extreme edge of the flying bomb range. One rather strange incident happened. One morning I was awakened by the gentle shaking of everything in my bedroom. I thought that this was a flying bomb, but it turned out to be a small earthquake! We were in the wrong area of the country to have contact with American service people; they were stationed mainly in East Anglia i.e. Norfolk & Suffolk. However, I did meet one American girl of about my own age. She was from Kearney, Nebraska and attended my school for a little while. Why & how she came from Kearney to Sheffield, I have no idea.

I was so young when the war started that the general privations which all people suffered were, to me, just the normal way of life & so I did not feel in any way deprived or inconvenienced. It was natural for me to be trained to have no food fads because of rationing, whatever was put on the table was eaten, & no questions asked! This experience has stood me in good stead throughout my life for I am very rarely finicky were food is concerned.

One of my Father’s R.A.F. postings was to Hereford, a small cathedral city in the SW midlands with a very rural hinterland. Dad arranged three holidays for the family in Hereford which I enjoyed thoroughly. Travelling back from the last of these holidays we passed mile upon mile of army vehicles lined up on the main road from Hereford to the NW of England. I now know that these vehicles were part of the D Day staging operations. [HNC note: The fact that the Germans had no advanced warnings with easily observable preparations like this shows how ineffective that German intelligence was at this stage of the War.]

I can recall the Sheffield trams being hung with buntings and on V J day they really went town and had some of the trams festooned with electric lights.

We stayed with our relations until Dad was released from his duties with the R.A.F. and then returned to Bexley to continue our interrupted life and for me to grow to maturity.

Figure 2.--think that the photograph here says it all with regard to my clothes as a child; once I got to school this was the way I dressed give or take a few occasional adjustments.

My Childhood Games

As far as I can remember the games which I played when young were rather run of the mill, such things as Cops & Robbers. There were many forms of pretend military games. (In which all the units consisted of senior officers!) Other popular games included: Conkers, Piggy in the Middle, British Bulldogs, Tig, Statues, and many circle games. Being a rather quiet sort of lad I tended to play quite a lot of board and card games, such as Monopoly, Totopoly (the Horse Racing companion to Monopoly & which I now think has disappeared), Draughts, Ludo, Happy Families, Patience, Snap, and Bagatelle. I had a Meccano set and a model railway and had a large collection of Dinkey toys.

Clothes

The photograph here shows how I was dressed as a younger boy 1-2 yeats old (figure 1).

School Clothes

think that the photograph here says it all with regard to my clothes as a child; once I got to school this was the way I dressed give or take a few occasional adjustments (figure 2). This photograph was taken in August 1949 when I was 13 years Five months old. When school started again in September, I wore my first long trousers. I was not pleased about this, I had it in my mind that I would emerge from childhood at the age of 14 and that one of my birthday presents would be a pair of long trousers, my parents could not find any shorts that fitted me, so I had to put up with it, and to this day, I still feel that, insofar as sartorial matters are concerned I was robbed of six months of my childhood.

Schools

I attended five schools during my youth.

Primary Schools

When we moved from Sheffield, we went to live on a recently built housing estate which had its own primary school, which was just as modern as the estate which it served. It was a typical building of the 1930s, plenty of windows and verandahs, etc. I visited their web site before writing this essay and the pictures therein show that the original building is still intact and still looks quite acceptable by today’s standards. By the time that this school was built, the practise of having separate entrances for boys & girls had been dropped, but we had separate play areas.

On my return to Sheffield I went to a typical Victorian school built in 1870. At that time it catered for 5-11 year olds, it still exists and now caters for 3-7 year olds. A fire demolished the top storey of the school when the family happened to be on holiday.

So when I returned from holiday I was transferred to another primary school in a somewhat tougher area of Sheffield. I would say that this school was of the same Victorian vintage and was closely connected with the next door parish church. We regularly attended services there. Due to the rather rougher atmosphere in this school, I did not get on very well and was quickly transferred.

My next school was the one a cousin attended. I got on well at this school and it was while at this school that I returned to live in the S E of England. My head master was a bit upset that I left Sheffield just a year before transferring to Secondary school.

All my schools in Sheffield were co-educational. They showed the attitudes of former years by having separate entrances for boys and girls, but we were taught together, at playtime, however, we were segregated. I finished my Primary school years at the school first mentioned in this essay and became one of the school monitors. My job was seeing that the daily milk ration was placed outside the doors of each classroom. During this short period I took my 11+ exam, but due to my weakness with anything to do with numbers, I did not make it to Grammar School. This worried my parents more than it did me.

Secondary school

I chose a school about 1.5 miles from my home and started there in September 1946. I would say that this school was built in the 1920s, judging by its architecture. There were two buildings, one for each sex, and, mirabile dictu, during my whole 6 years at this school I never caught sight of any of the girls! They must have done a very good job of segregation! I eventually rose to the dizzy height of head boy, and while at my final year the school split on to two sites. The younger boys stayed at the original site and the older ones transferred to this new building which was much nearer to my home. I eventually left this school in July 1951 and in September I began my working life with the Ordnance Survey which is the official mapping agency in the U.K. A look at a recent map shows that the building which housed the boys on the original site is now no longer a school, while the former girl’s building is now a primary school. The building which housed the senior boys during my last year has become a co-educational secondary school with a completely different name.

Uniforms

Primary schools

My primary schools had no uniform, but as you have said in other areas of HBC, white shirts, grey shorts and socks with shoes or sandals were well nigh universal at that time.

Secondary school

My secondary school had the traditional school cap, black with two rings consisting of green, edged with silver. The school motif was on the front of the cap. The only other uniform item was the blazer which was black, with the school motif on the left breast pocket. As was traditional in England at that time we all wore shorts for the first few years and then wore long trousers. I do not remember any rule as to when the change was expected of us, but it seemed to happen between the ages of 13 and 14 years of age.