RLS DURING WARTIME

for all your chaps who missed the excitement of WW II and the trots across the football pitches to the "trenches" close to Gussie's house, try and find a copy of a book "Hitler V. Havering". I have purchased at least six and given them to Brit friends of my vintage who live over here. They found them interesting - ISBN #0-9524-0320-X. (Geoffrey Styles)

One WW II memory I recall with great clarity was the morning a V-1 flew over as were being herded to the trenches once the siren had sounded. Every boy stopped to look at this black object hurtling across the sky and spouting fire from the tail, and the masters looked (I suppose) like cattlemen trying to get us moving again. Fascinating. (The V-l fell at Noak Hill) (Geoffrey Styles)

...when the V-1s first appeared the air raid warning system was somewhat caught out by their fast approach, and the sirens would wail either after, or as in this example, just as the V-1 was about to pass overhead. I have mentioned before the classic remark by Jobling that if we heard an approaching jet engine cut out during the Physics class our instruction was to dive under the lab. benches, when there was clearly no way that Jumbo would be able to lead in this manoeuvre by example! Incidentally, I remember the closest V-2 to the School arrived during a Physics lesson - I was for some reason looking down at the floor at the time and was startled to see it appear to jump up towards me! Then of course you hear the bang and after that the noise of the rocket tumbling down to earth. What memories! (John C. Jennings)

We often sang "For those in peril on the Sea", as our existence depended very much on the RN men and merchant sailors who were carrying food across the Atlantic. I still choke up when I try to sing that hymn. Foolish I suppose after all these years! (Geoffrey Styles)

My father was with the Civil Service as a supervisor at the Romford Labour Exchange. In the early days of the war he (and others) "fire-watched" that building from the half buried shelter located behind that old country house which was the Exchange. He, mother, and I slept there.The old YMCA (a wooden building) was almost adjacent. We were in that shelter the night an oil bomb hit the Henry Haysom furniture store at the corner of Church Lane. It went up like a rocket, and the heat was so intense the wooden Alms Houses on the west side of North Street (across the road) burned. The old folks got out the back and probably had to cross the Rom River to make it to safety.
My father, mother and I left the shelter, hurried past the Golden Lion through their yard, and made it along the High Street to Mawneys Road and so to Linden Street and almost home when our visitors came back. They started dropping stuff and so we huddled against a brick wall on Marshalls Drive until it became quiet. Then we went home to Medora Road and begged a neighbor to give us space in their already crowded Anderson shelter. Anderson shelters were given to people in low income brackets. I guess my old man made over the limit! (Geoffrey Styles)

I just think it would be interesting to know how the school was run at this time... air raid precautions. So if anybody wants to write in these pages... I 'd be interested to read...I was about 8 when the war finished.. and although I remember the bombs, I wasn’t really old enough to be conscious of the whole scene. (Colin Calvert)

A few topics have slipped out piecemeal already:
1.Air raid shelters, surviving brick-built surface, and dug-out trenches now disappeared.
2. Harvest Camps and reminiscences thereof (I would guess the camps didn't start until about 1942).
3.Staff being called up for National Service and covered for by the delayed retirement of older staff (was our theory!), temporary stand-ins some of whom wouldn't normally be considered adequate, and, so we understood, the first women teachers to be employed at the School.
4. Clothes rationing/shortages and the decline from a strict uniform regime in 1939 to everyone wearing whatever they could come by in 1945.
5. The School field being used for public entertainments which were vaguely connected with the war effort - to keep up spirits or raise funds for armaments (Romford was given targets to raise the money to pay variously for a warship and for n Spitfires). As has been said, Daddy Schofield's dogs and his acrobatic team (q.v.) participated together with BB, scouts, civil defence, etc.
6. Interruptions to lessons during air raids, V1 and V2 attacks.
Other aspects come back to haunt me:
1. 'Holidays at Home' which was a local initiative to keep up morale, a family trip to the seaside being out of the question. The RLS participated in this and pupils were able to come to school and indulge in supervised activities, e.g. table tennis. I tried this out in August, 1940 before starting in Form 1c in September, but in subsequent years found more engrossing activities at and around home.
2.General shortages of materials - books, woodwork materials, but others will have experienced similar things, also a host of minor irritations such as natural wood (unpainted) pencils.
3.Rescheduling of the timetable to ensure that we all were able to get home, even to furthest Dagenham, before the black-out bit in.
4. The restriction of movement whereby we could all move freely around most of the RLS catchment area to visit each other and even cycle as far as Fairlop to see the fighter squadrons take off and land, but the 'coastal strip' military zone which came inland as far as Brentwood and included Hornchurch aerodrome was out of bounds.
There has recently been a series on TV which recreated many of the details of civilian life in the war years, including the building of an Anderson air raid shelter. Some of the relics used have been brought together in a re-creation of the times at the London War Museum. The general conclusion was that life was hard by modern standards, but that didn't stop it being good and certainly for we youngsters there was much to enjoy. (John C. Jennings)

Thanks for that, John… It must have been amazing to be at that impressionable age under all those circumstances... I don’t think those who didn’t experience that situation can really appreciate the effect. I remember cycling down to bunkers at Hornchurch aerodrome when I was at RLS... and finding live rounds of ammunition .. mainly 303 rifle bullets… which were greatly prized. (thinks... what happened to them?) (Colin Calvert)

Wartime RLS: As John (Jennings) says, there was a general shortage of materials. On one occasion another pupil and I were sent to Romford by the woodwork master (Mr Marshal) with instructions to visit every wood yard to plead for off-cuts and other scraps of wood. Nothing doing, of course, as the supply of wood was controlled by licence - no licence, no wood.
The restriction of movement which John describes came into force in April, 1944, as a prelude to the invasion of Europe (D-Day) in June that year. A large part of Southern England was put out of bounds to people in the rest of the Country. The intention of the restriction was twofold, firstly to ensure that the massive build up of the invasion force was not hampered by unnecessary civilian travel in the region and secondly to minimise the possible observation of the preparations by enemy agents. Control was enforced by the random stopping of civilians for identity card checks. There were heavy penalties for offenders. Curiously, the boundary of the zone locally ran down the middle of Brentwood Road. Thus travelling to school from Romford on the 247 'bus, as I did, was ok, but, as I resided outside the restricted area, I was committing an offence when returning to Romford by the same bus route.
For almost a year after joining the School in September, 1943, I had no occasion to use the shelters in the grounds which John talks about, as air raids at that time mostly took place at night. The big change came in June, 1944 with the start of the flying bomb attacks on Southern England. In the early days of that offensive we would be backwards and forwards to the shelters several times a day. The most of the School used the trench shelters situated on the northern side of the playing fields. There were benches on each side of the trench, which, when occupied, just left a narrow walkway on duck boards through the middle of the dugout. The two long lines of pupils made teaching almost impossible, particularly as classes tended to get mixed up during the perambulation from school to shelter. But all was not lost, as the seating arrangements and the dim lighting were ideal for card schools. Brag, pontoon and knockout whist helped overcome the boredom of many impromptu lessons, while at the same time refining and improving our gambling skills. The mother of one of the pupils in my form wrote a letter to the Romford Recorder complaining bitterly about the degenerate behaviour of the oafs her boy came into contact with in the shelters. He was a decent lad, very polite and always did his homework Oddly, just a week later, he arrived late at school, a thing he had never done before. At the time, we were enjoying an English lesson under the benign tutelage of 'Pip' Pilling. "Hello, Hindstritch", Pip said jovially as the late comer entered the classroom, "been playing cards then?", adding, almost as an after thought, "Come and have your ear clipped, laddie". (Peter Ray)

There was a very large water tank positioned on the side nearest the swimming pool as I recall for ARP use. ARP was a term well known in those days - Air Raid Precautions. Anyone remember a Geography teacher named Mr Brooks. I and several other boys went to his house on the Arterial Road and helped install "scrim" on the windows. Such material was placed on windows to minimize blast effects. (Geoffrey Styles)

The Styles must have been very well behaved pupils. I remember going down the air raid shelters and straight out of the escape hatch at the back. Over to the golf course to watch the dog fights. Later 1943, in the ATC, firewatching in Romford Market at 1/9 a night, and straight to school in the morning. What fun! (Eddie Pond)

My memories from the WW II years are probably of little interest to many readers. At the RLS there was good discipline, people were punished for infractions of the rules, and the hot meals at noon were a good supplement to normal rations. Some masters were regarded highly for various reasons while others were the butt of jokes. It seems everyone I knew loved Hartley!
There was no clothing code enforcement as each person had a 26 coupon allotment with which to get articles of clothing. I think a man's suit took all 26 coupons (one also had to pay for garments of course). I remember that most people gave up on underwear as the years rolled by, keeping their coupon allowance for garments that showed.
The pre-military training groups did not exist. News of the glider was quite surprising to me when I first saw those posts. I always enjoyed model planes and built several "chuck" gliders and would fly them on the school grounds. Oddly enough I think I was the only person doing such a thing. 'Gussie' Hartley observed my activities and asked me to construct two to sell at the summer fair. I was probably flattered, but they did fly. I can't recall the selling price. Rubber for duration model motors was not available so one had to build gliders from whatever kits had remained on shelves in hobby shops. I bought stuff at Garwoods on Mawney Road.
My Dad had an old Kodak "Hawkeye" box camera which was useless during the war years as film was not obtainable. I therefore have no pictures of me or family members from the years 1940-1946.
I do remember one lunch time in November when I attached a Catherine wheel (for some reason fireworks could still be bought) to the window frame in Dr. Witt's classroom. I was about to ignite it when quite unexpectedly he entered the room early. He said - We don't need any emblems to decorate the room, Styles.
No sir - I said - and hurriedly unpinned it and dropped it to the ground. I think that was my most outrageous act while in school. Pretty tame compared to later events created (or perpetrated) by others.
Our biggest and most exciting days happened during air raids. Sirens sounding, classrooms emptying, every rushing across the first eleven football pitch to the trenches, and then sitting in the dark while waiting for the 'all clear'.
Some clever chaps made small lamps with shoe polish cans (or similar) for a reservoir for an unidentified fuel, stuffed them with cloth and used a piece of string for a wick. However the most important asset was a deck of cards used by those lucky enough to have illumination. I am very grateful for the long term friendships I enjoy with several of my contemporaries. I like my direct contacts with several members of the group and enjoy those exchanges also.
As others have said, if I had realized the opportunities facing me in those years, I would have worked harder. But at age 71 I get along nicely and what's the sense in regretting the past.
I sometimes wonder how my life would have turned out had I remained in the UK, but then I have had a very interesting experience without regrets. And that's enough for this morning. I do feel at times like the 'ancient mariner' in this group. I am grateful my brother also subscribes as he is even older than I! (Geoffrey Styles) : "John C. Jennings"

I remember you were living in central Romford during the war and you would have experienced some pretty devastating explosions close to your home during the Blitz and V1/V2 attacks. I was just across the road from RLS, so had the advantage of being able to nip to and from home as the air raid warnings and all-clears sounded. (John C. Jennings)

Wartime Harvest Camps: I have not seen any reference to the WW II scheme whereby schoolboys were enlisted in the war effort for day labor on farms. Government representatives from the Ministry of Food visited schools and asked for volunteers to help by bringing in the harvest in August. They would also be doing other farm chores as seen necessary by the farmers to whom they would be assigned. I signed up in 1942 with my parent's permission and committed for four weeks. It was agreed I would go wherever I was needed and do whatever I was asked to do. An open commitment!

A group of us were sent to Great Bentley, Essex. We learned it had the largest village green of any village in England. We slept in Nissen huts on palliasses stuffed with straw, Yes, we stuffed them ourselves. The floor where we placed the "mattresses" was concrete - no give. On arrival we were fed and the country food, after three years of rations at home, was a wonderful sight and an even more wonderful taste. I can still remember the cherry pie the farmer's wife placed in front of us. Never had anything like it before in my life! Later we walked over to a barn to see cows being milked at the end of the day. Fresh, rich milk was brought out to us in a pitcher and I had never tasted anything so creamy. It was right from the cow through the cooler and amazingly good.

No assignments that day so we got settled in for the night. We were told to be ready for work at eight o'clock the following morning. With full bellies and untold excitement we talked late and finally fell asleep. The concrete floor bothered us not at all although some of the lads got more straw next day from a pile outside the door.

I was assigned to a Mr. Blacks farm. Never having been on a large farm before I found every sight of interest. The first day we were held in the farmyard and told to wait for a wagon coming in from the field. A huge thresher was set up, driven by a wide flat belt from the power take-off on a large tractor. There was also a conveyor with wooden slats complete with large spikes attached to twin drive chains aimed at the top of the thrasher.

A wagon loaded high with wheat sheaves soon arrived. Two of us were given pitchforks and sent to the top of the wagonload. Our job was to pitch the sheaves one at a time, onto the conveyor so the men on top of the thresher could feed them into that machine. We handled that with a little difficulty at first but gradually the task became routine. I recall Norman Winston, a sixth former, was given the thankless job of clearing away the chaff that discharged from the side of the thresher. Nobody knew he suffered from "hay fever". Within about fifteen minutes he was completely choked up. He had to be sent home and could not come back for the program. I was amazed because he was such a big, robust fellow and I had never seen anyone so knocked out with hay fever before.

Once the threshing was completed that week, we were sent into a field to stook more wheat sheaves. A twenty acre fields produces a lot of sheaves when there is a good crop. We asked if it would also be threshed and were told it would be stacked in the farm yard for threshing later. Sure enough, we were put back on top of a wagon a few days later and helped throw sheaves from the wagon to the men who were building the stack, straw side out to protect the heads of the stems from the weather.

That evening we were told to be ready at about 7:30 a.m. to be picked up and taken to another field where the wheat was ready to be cut and made into sheaves. Two tractors with reaping machines attached were ready and waiting in the field. There were some men with shotguns. One of the tractor operators also had a shotgun. Before the machinery was started up men went around the perimeter of the field with net which they spread over all the rabbit holes they could find. The goal was to catch rabbits at their burrows if they escaped the shotguns.

Wee were told to work close to the tractors so the men would always know where we were. As the reapers started at the edges of the field, the rabbits moved closer to the center. Now and then a rabbit would run out and get shot. A couple of dogs were on hand and they chased rabbits when told to "go". They caught the rabbits at the nets. By the time the machinery got close to the center of the field it was bedlam. Rabbits were running out in all directions and men were shooting, dogs were chasing and we were excited as heck with all the activity.

I would guess that close to fifty rabbits were killed that morning. They were shared equally at the break by the men who had hunted them down. A fair arrangement, as meat was hard to come by in those days. Maybe these coneys were sold to neighbors as farmers rarely seemed to short of beef or pork.

This big day sure made for a lot of excitement for a twelve year old from the town.  I went to two more wartime camps but will cut this story off now as it has become much longer than I intended. I sure hope I have not bored you or gone over my "word" limit!!

We did not see any buzz bombs at Great Bentley. If I remember correctly the Germans did not test a doodlebug until the end of 1942. We did see plenty in Romford once they started to send them over. It seemed to me some flew right down Medora Road and landed in Collier Row.

The Battle of Britain was long past so no dog fights, but we did see the occasional raider. Nothing serious, just the siren would sound and we would feel quite safe in the fields. We did see USAAC aircraft well overhead heading for the Continent. Late in the day we might see damaged aircraft limping back to bases in East Anglia. Some had smoke coming from them, some had holes we could see, and some were flying very low.

We did not get "close to" the WLA lasses. On one occasion in Northhamptonshire, Donald Ginn and I were walking g back to our camp (the one where Mrs. Ward cooked) and we saw gals sunbathing in their panties and bras in a field. We stopped and they called us over. We knew what the equipment was for but we did not know how to go about initiating any close contact! Poor innocent children we were! (Geoffrey Styles)