Wartime in 'The Triangle'

It is 60 years now since the war in Europe and the Far East stopped and Hitler shot himself ingloriously in his bunker. So many people are looking back to when it all began, so I do too.

Wheatacre Norfolk. 3rd September 1939. It was a lovely Sunday May morning and I was coming home from chapel, fifteen years old and very aware of waiting impatiently to be sixteen.

No longer in liberty bodices, proud to be wearing a bra, but with two more years at least of schooling ahead and — oh boy! — boyfriends (potential if not actual) everywhere. Uniform and white socks the rule on five days a week but curls and Woolworth’s artificial silk stockings on Sundays, with a Tangee lipstick hidden in my drawer, but disapproving reactions from my father when I dared to try it out.

I was born and lived in the school house attached to the three-room school. Headmasters in those days were respected and perhaps feared, or rather their approval was preferred. Being a Headmaster’s daughter meant that one was supposed to set an example. “If my daughter behaves badly how can I expect other parents to believe I can control their children,” was the comment I dreaded.

Anyway there we were at war and expecting bombs to rain down any minute, as our village was near the coast, opposite Europe, I think I expected soldiers to drop out of the sky. When that first night the sirens wailed I remember lying on my bed shivering with fear. Of course nothing happened for months though Burgh St Peter did have the first bomb in the district, jettisoned I expect by a ‘plane on its way home. It landed in woodland, blew a small crater and had people coming by cars to see the place.

Father, as Air Raid Warden, turned them back pointing out that there was nothing to see and it was all on private land anyway.

Later on in the war my mother was at the pump getting water (we had no running water or sewage service) then she heard a ‘plane flying low and looked up thinking “that’s a big one” when she saw bombs dropping from it. She moved faster! Miraculously they dropped between the big barn and Wheatacre Hall just two fields away. It was a wet day and men were working in the barn. That was our biggest event of the whole six years.

What a shake-up we all had socially though in the next year. Evacuees came from London. Those with mothers sat on the King’s Head pub wall while their parents went inside be-moaning the complete lack of fish and chip shops. They soon went back to London before the blitz began. Some children sent on their own were settled in families and kindly treated made friends for life. My mother’s brother Stanley in USA (California) offered to have me. Thank God my parents decided they couldn’t part with their only child and didn’t tell me till later. I should have refused to go anyway. I don’t think American life in a somewhat affluent family would have been at all good for me. (I got married in a suit sent in a lovely clothing parcel in 1948 by the same aunt whose name I don’t remember.)

Buses ran from the village — perhaps two a day — I’m not sure, but travel was by bicycle and train. The station was just over two miles away at Aldeby and I caught a train to school just about 8 am and got home about 4.45 pm. Of course once bombing began on this line which led from London (LNER) to Lowestoft and Yarmouth, both busy ports, the line became damaged and train times were unreliable. One could always cycle to school in Beccles but then it meant getting home in the dark in winter with only small circles of lights cut into cardboard over the cycle lights. This showed someone was coming to on-coming traffic but showed nothing of what or who was ahead. I ran into a courting couple one night from behind. I don’t think any damage was done!

Life went on. I grew up gradually with hard study for Higher School Certificate and a greater interest in “boys”. We got used to lorry loads of soldiers whistling at us as we cycled around to the station or to Beccles when the trains were disrupted. I can almost smell again the chemical whiff as the lorries passed. All uniforms were impregnated with something which became a familiar “aura” around any serviceman.

We had a searchlight battery on the route to our swimming place at Wherry Dyke (opposite Shrublands, Burgh St Peter) and passing that was always exciting because the bored soldiers were on the look-out for female distraction.

Eventually I was allowed to go to the dances held at Aldeby School for various fund raising activities. Our local boys bumbled around but some of our new visitors had “style”. The dances at Aldeby attracted soldiers from the local searchlight batteries but they were mainly English though often from foreign parts — like Yorkshire! Dumbo as a Yank stuck out as a real stranger. One Saturday night after I had left for my first job he cycled over. A rather drunk local must have seen him arrive and charge in the hall threatening to “do him” for getting his daughter in the family way. Dumbo had no idea what he was talking about and beat a retreat to the cloakroom where Geoff Rose was one of the locals who managed to shove him through the small window.

Remembering these dances which were to records and usually to raise money for Spitfires or some other good cause, I also recall the foul coffee which was made with ‘Camp’ and dried milk. Biscuits were available on occasions.

Aldeby School had less pupils than Wheatacre and was a church school with a woman head. Father’s reputation as an excellent teacher drew quite a few children from Aldeby parish to Wheatacre. His was a council school not under the church’s thumb. In fact he asked the vicar to knock when he called, not just walk into the classroom as if he had the right.

Gradually our old school mates got called up — there was news of deaths but it all seemed part of some film and not reality. Classes were interrupted while we filed off to the wet air-raid shelters and sat with feet on duckboards at the bottom of the hockey field. We all had tins with a bar of chocolate and a biscuit or two which were supported to be kept for emergencies in case we were shut away for hours. Few tins remained full after a few weeks. I suppose it was a Higher Cert. exam which was interrupted in this way and we were on our honour not to speak of the paper. I forget when gas masks were introduced — early in the war. It was obligatory to carry them at all times. I got a black suede case for my cardboard box. They didn’t last long uncovered and the gas mask case was useful on school days as a handbag.

The Sir John Leman Grammar School was originally set up by the founder in the 17th century. He was a member of the fishmongers’ guild and the original building in the town is now a museum. It is built of flint.

As evacuees had arrived in the schools we were overcrowded and in 1942 the sixth form was being split up for many lessons and we were accommodated in Peddar’s Lane in a rather derelict, unused building in the town, which had been an infant school. (It is still there as a store of some kind.) One afternoon in spring a few of us were there with just the books needed for the afternoon when a message came that we were to go straight home as the school was on fire.

This proved to be nothing to do with enemy action but an electrical fault. Some pupil drew the master’s attention to smoke outside the window (top floor) and he just ordered the window to be shut. Not until the music master’s wife, who lived opposite, raised the alarm that the roof was alight, was action taken — too late to save the stop storey — books, papers, notes of two years study for our final exams were all lost. Our sixth form room though not burned was ruined by water pouring in from above. Those of us in town had very little of the work with us in our cases, as we only had taken books for the subjects of the afternoon.

I was Head Girl at the time and next morning joined the Head Boy (who I rather fancied at the time) in a melancholy visit to the school and searched through the sixth form room to rescue what we could. In the next few days our small exam group, with only a few weeks to revise, shared what we had left. (I remember I had Regional Geography and someone else had Physical Geography.) I was taking English (main) and French and Economics (subsidiary).

From then on until exams were over in July we had to share our classes with the New Secondary Modern school in Beccles. Their pupils went in the mornings and Sir John Leman pupils went in the afternoons. This meant cycling to school every day. Fortunately it was the summer time. Our dinners were taken at the British Restaurant (sometimes called Civic Restaurants) in the Town Hall during this time and the prefects helped with the serving. Anyone could go to a British restaurant. They were used by people from factories or doing other war work.

I was by then eighteen but by present standards not considered grown up — though outside school (with friends who had left at fourteen years and were out to work) I played a different role.

I was allowed to go to the occasional dance in Beccles at the Caxton Printing Works social club house. This was on the edge of Beccles Common just over the railway line. With Esmé and Ena Tripp we biked there in all weathers. We didn’t have plastic macs and sometimes got very wet. This was a disaster for our page boy bobs because unlike today hair was supposed to be smooth and curled under or up in rolls around the head. This was how girls in the services were encouraged to ‘dress’ their hair. A bootlace or piece of ribbon was tied around the head and long hair was lifted up and rolled around it. Hairgrips held it together but there were scarce. People queued up at chemists for such things and lipstick when rumour had it there had been a delivery.

It was there that we met people from outside our area. All over the country the old village families were being mixed up — very good to counter past interbreeding.

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