The war affected various aspects of school life, including the way that many boys spent their holidays.
Norman Davies (OM 1940 – 42) remembers the School encouraging boys to do their bit for the war effort in the summer holidays:
Every class had to go to a farm, and you picked potatoes. We went for the day. The tractor came round and dug them all up and you had to pick them up by hand. And, I’m not kidding, I hated it! My back was terrible afterwards, but we all had to do it for the war effort. All classes had to do it.
Plum picking camp
Theo Roland (OM 1938 – 45) also has vivid memories of holiday war work with the School:
In the summer we went to farm camps. I went to several, the first one nearly killed me! I went to Ormskirk, pea picking. We cycled there. I didn’t have a proper bike, mine was an old bike with no gears. Normally a Jewish boy got a bike for his bar mitzvah but I hadn’t because of the war – you couldn’t get bikes. There were a lot of older boys who had proper bikes. We went along the East Lancashire Road and I was half dead trying to keep up with them and they were taking the mickey out of me. We got there and I was absolutely exhausted! And we hadn’t even started.
Pea picking, Ormskirk, 1941
The other camp was at Wem in Shropshire. We picked potatoes there and lifted stooks of corn. Some of the masters worked with us and there were land girls. The land girls were hefty and strong and the masters felt they had to keep up with them. Whereas we lifted two stooks of corn, the land girls were picking up four and five in one go and they were doing it on purpose! Ike Tenen [Isidore Tenen, History master 1923 – 58] was nearly dead trying to keep up with the land girls!
In addition to farm work, Bryan Nagle (OM 1937 – 43) remembers a huge diversity of war work undertaken:
I took part in several War Effort Camps, Peapicking in Ormskirk, Silver Birch Tree felling for Mine Pit Props, and volunteered to work Saturday mornings in the Metal work shop at school, making small parts on the lathes for the RAF. In my last year I did some fire watching in our area for magnesium bombs. I joined the School Air Training Corps, learned Morse code, rifle Drill and “Square bashing”. We even had flights in an RAF De Havilland.
Inspection of MGS ATC Squadron by W.W. Wakefield, M.P. and Air Commodore Guilfoyle, March 1942
The ATC was a popular choice for boys. Theo Roland remembers that it was run by the masters:
So many of the teachers were called up. The school had an ATC training corps which I joined. The officers were all masters. But not all the masters were involved as a lot were elderly and had come back to School to help out. It was interesting and fun, we did gliding and various people came from the R.A.F. stations to talk to us. We had one Wing Commander come and he said “You’ve got to look after your bowels! Napoleon lost because he didn’t look after his bowels!”
Ernest Barlow (OM 1941 – 44) has memories of the ATC too:
[The ATC] was an important part of school life during the war. We had many lectures and lots of parades. We also visited RAF stations as part of a training. I recall one visit to an RAF base in Cheshire when we flew in a twin-engine De-Haviland Rapide.
In addition to war work activities, the School was also open over the shorter holidays, as Theo Roland recalls:
During the School holidays (the short holidays such as Easter) the School kept open and masters ran the place. They weren’t teaching but you did sports, you played cricket or football or whatever. This was part of the teachers’ war effort. Once we were given knives to dig out the dandelions from the lawn! They did this because our parents were involved in war work. Otherwise we’d stay at home and maybe get into trouble. You didn’t have to go – but my parents wanted me out of the way so they sent me!
Scout work camp
Despite the war, the School managed to keep up camps. David Hewett (1943 – 50) remembers Grasmere Camp towards the end of the war:
One wartime activity to which I expected to be introduced did not in fact come about. I signed up to join Tommy Stott’s Grasmere camp in 1944. One of the activities was due to be the collecting of Sphagnum moss, which was still used in those days for wound packing. We never did actually collect any…perhaps antibiotics and synthetic dressings were already taking over.
In August 1945, I was in camp at Grasmere when news of the Hiroshima bomb reached us. I remember a sixth former who studied physics explaining to us the principles of nuclear fission as we lounged in the Lakeland sunshine.
I was at MGS from 1937-1942, I remember being part of the ATC and that we had RAF members talk to us. One asked me what I wanted to do when i left and I said a Fighter Pilot, he was very pleased- “that's the stuff boy he said”!