Memories
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Many thanks to Joan Watson (Smith 1944-51) for sending her wartime memories to me a couple of years ago when she included a copy of Miss King’s Foreword to the School Magazine of 1944/45. Unfortunately there was insufficient space for me to include even a section of it, but I can now do so, especially as there is much being said about the 80th Anniversary of the start of the Second World War!
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Miss King (right) wrote in the 1938-9 School Magazine that “The clouds have closed around us and we are at war, for a few it is again. Be assured that in carrying on your home duties and meeting all these worried cheerfully you are giving real service to the country.” Many activities were curtailed including sport, outside activities and the school magazine but this was a decided patriotic move to save paper. CCHS girls grew vegetables and flowers which were sent to the Military Hospital and adopted HMS Greenfly (Picture below © IWM (FL 13584)) (The Greenfly was a civilian trawler requisitioned by the Royal Navy in August/September 1939 and was used as an anti-submarine vessel.) They collected second hand clothing for the French Resistance movement and Russian soldiers at the front.
They joined the Anglo-Soviet Youth Alliance and also sent toys to the Pravda Children’s Home.
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The Second World War is quite a topical theme and if anyone would like to send their wartime memories to me, I am sure it will make very interesting reading.
Miss King writes: In 1939, when the School Magazine last appeared, the War had just begun - now the War has been won. One generation has spent most of its School life under that shadow which is now lifted to our great thankfulness. The picture of those six years given in a few lines is, of necessity, very incomplete.
At the end of August 1939 the Staff were recalled to Colchester in order to help with the evacuees who arrived shortly. We helped with their reception and billeting in various ways. Those at the station came back saying “how heavy the babies are!” A certain number of our girls left Colchester for other parts of England and we could not begin School until the trenches were ready. When the first one was finished at Grey Friars we were able to begin work with our older girls and some of the Sixth Form from the Grammar School.
Girls came back gradually, as shelter after shelter was completed. Although we had to use these from time to time, sometimes several times in one day, sometimes only for short periods at long intervals, we realise how much more fortunate we have been than many Schools. Our “incident” mercifully happened on a Friday evening when a bomb fell in the Castle Park (11th December 1943)and blew out many of the windows at the back of Grey Friars and the School had to be closed for a few days until the unexploded bomb was removed.
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We were glad to welcome several isolated evacuees who stayed for varying periods and two large groups from Harwich and Clacton who came to us temporarily.
In the autumn of 1940 the children from Colchester Borough and coastal district were evacuated for “military reasons,” and the School was closed temporarily. During this time the Staff organised small groups of girls not eligible for evacuation in the houses of hospitable parents outside Colchester, and our “village Schools” flourished until the School was re-opened. Meanwhile one party had gone to Kettering with Miss Walker and Miss Blunt.
There they worked with the Dame Alice Owen School (evacuated from Islington) sharing Kettering High School premises. Another party went to Burton-on-Trent with Miss Benson (now Mrs Bolam), Miss Nightingale and Miss Hockaday (now Mrs Douglas). We still have a link with Burton as Miss Mulley (above), who left us to be the Headmistress of a school at Sheffield, is now the Headmistress of the Burton High School (1944-51). It is impossible to express adequate gratitude to the Schools and hostesses who showed so much kindness to our girls. Other girls were evacuated privately or in very small groups. Nearly all were back by December 1940.
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The undesirability of large gatherings and the capacity of the shelters made it unwise to hold the Sports at North Hill for several years. Instead parents were invited to various activities given by groups of Forms. The Preparatory Sports and the Carols were continued throughout the war. On two occasions the Carols were combined with a beautifully produced Nativity Play and on the first occasion we instituted the Presentation of Certificates, now a regular annual feature of School life.
Naturally there have been many changes on the Staff during these years. In the Spring Term 1942, we were all deeply grieved by the death of Miss Peatfield who, as Senior Mathematical Mist4ess, had given such devoted service to the School since September 1926. All those who knew her realise how much they owe to her gentle and kind and unselfish personality. Some may feel they would like to send a donation to the School Leaving Scholarship Fund, in which she took so much interest, in memory of her.
Elsewhere in this Magazine is a very incomplete account of some of the work done during 1939-45 by present and past girls. One part of this brings the farewell letter from the “Greenfly” with its final kindly lesson, re-inforcing a sentence form the Editorial in the last issue of the Magazine: School citizenship, like ordinary citizenship, means facing up to the difficulties and differences of the present and adjusting ourselves to them with good humour.”
This was wise advice in 1939 and is so still in 1945, but then it was easier to carry out than it is now. We feel disappointed because our expectations are not being fulfilled more quickly, without having to work for our ideals even harder in peace then in war. We are impatient and dislike having to put up with the restrictions and inconveniences we have endured, fairly cheerfully, for some years. It seems hard that it will be so long before the world recovers from the upheaval of 1939-45 and conditions become tolerable and stabilised everywhere, but we are gradually, though very slowly, learning that the world is indivisible and anywhere must mean everywhere.
Our nation faced the dangers of war with courage. Let us trust that we have emerged with a more unselfish determination to work for and to serve others and to aim at that unity among all which alone can save the world.
RH King
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