When the 2nd World War in Europe finally ended in 1945 I was packed off to boarding school. My father had been killed several months before and my mother for one reason or another felt she wanted me out of the house. The main recollection I have of my time at this school was one of constant hunger and incredible cold. Rationing was still in full force and normal food supplies were not fully restored in Britain until the 1960's. One of the most memorable memories of my time there was the appearance of bacon one Sunday morning, something unheard of . Even now I have no idea where such a luxury come from, rumber had it that a staff member had run over a pig on the way to work. Sitting at my table in the large mess was a Jewish boy who burst into tears at the appearance of pork. Fortunately his table mates were only to happy to remove the offending bacon .
Often in the mornings we were locked out in the cold school yard to toughen up. The temperature would be well below zero as we were required to play out there from 6.30 until breakfast at 8. We would gaze longingly at the apple tree in the headmaster garden ,while each of us examining our finger nails to see who had the most lucky white spots. The unfortunate one was then required to scale the fence, gather as many apples as possible, generally three to four minutes before a prefect or master on the prowl would spot you and march you off for another canning. Corporal punishment was the order of the day and played a major part in British education at the time.
The school was really a dismal affair, staffed mainly by Irish school teachers, who due to Eire neutrality were not called up for military service. Most nights they would return late at night from the pub drunk and start brawling on the stairs out side our dormitory, often falling halfway down the staircase. We would all put our heads under the pillow and hope they would not continue their fighting in our dorm. It seemed to us that the Irish found it necessary to carry out this ritual in order to bring the evening's entertainment to a close.
One small boy in our dormitory, we were all about eight or nine, claimed to live near Sherwood Forest and spent his holidays in Robin Hood's gang. Naturally we all thoughts this was wonderful and three of us decided to run away and join up immediately. Boys, because of the nature of the school were always running away, so we had no trouble collecting funds for our attempt at finding freedom. Looking back I feel the older pupils encouraged the younger ones, so as to cause as much disturbance as possible to the school routine . What ever the reasons, we were presented with the princely sum of eight shillings and decided to make a run for it on our Sunday walk to church. This seemed to be a great plan as we would be able to slip away unnoticed during the one mile walk , particularly as the walk went down several country lanes.
This Sherwood boy, I can't recall his name lived nearby, so he naturally took the lead as to the most direct route we needed to follow to reach Sherwood Forest. After a hour or so we became very hungry as breakfast seemed to have been light years way. Passing a fruit and vegetable shop the temptation to full our pockets with apples proved too great. Unfortunately ,Ginger and I did not know that the road we were in was a dead end with high stone walls on both sides. While Sherwood Forest was able to make a safe get away, Ginger and I were marched back to a cellar under the shop were we spent what seemed hours sitting on sacks of stale potatoes. Eventually the shopkeeper set us free without too many questions as to what we were doing running around on a Sunday morning.
We had no idea as to where we were. Ginger lived in London, so it was decided that as there was a train track near by, all trains must go to London so, if we followed the tracks we would eventually arrive at Ginger's house. I knew that I lived a long way away, as it had taken several hours by car to get to the school. We set off and eventually arrived at Windsor, we both knew it was Windsor because we recognised the Castle. Happily walking down Main street feeling pleased with ourselves we were suddenly grabbed from behind by one of our Irish master and marched off to a waiting car. Afterwards we discovered that the whole school staff had been out all day searching for us, so at least the senior boys would have been happy. The following day we were forced to wait several hours before being marched into the head master study, no doubt to enable us to get in the right frame of mind before receiving another trashing. It seemed that freedom would have to wait for another day.
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