WORSE TO COME Take Shelter! The second year of Greenford County School opened under conditions of heavy raiding. The School was opened for all pupils except new entrants on September 4th. The new entrants joined the School on September 18th. There were then 301 pupils on the roll (157 girls and 144 boys). Owing to enemy activity in the air, working conditions were very difficult for the first half of the term. Work was carried on as far as possible in shelters and a considerable atnount was done in the indoor shelters. The County Authorities sent an instruction that school should begin at 10:30 a.m. if an 'alert' was in being between the hours of midnight and 6:0 a.m. Authority was obtained to vary the hours of opening of school if local circumstances justified it. The school was opened at 9:50 and closed at 4:15, the dinner interval was shortened to one hour, and 98% of the parents were persuaded to allow their children to remain at school for the dinner interval. By these means the school was able to work during every minute that work was possible. The teaching and the kitchen staff carried on under trying circumstances not the least of which involved preparing 150 hot dinners daily and serving them more often than not in shelters, the staff taking their dinners as and when they could in the short time available. Those dinner hours were remembered in the first edition of the school magazine. Prospice in 1947:- . . the wail of the siren haunts our dinner hours, and almost daily the head rises from his place to say benignly as the wailing dies: 'pick up your plates, and knives and forks...' On fire-watching nights Mr Withrington added to the character we already knew as Headmaster, mathematician and philosopher, that of cook and kitchen maid, as he turned dried egg into a tempting dish, or flourished a tea-towel, talking all the while of 'cabbages and kings'. Even now, at 4 p.m, a smell of burnt toast will often guide to the common-room those who seek an interview with the Headmaster. During the second half of the autumn term there was some slackening of day time raiding which allowed a full timetable to he worked to the evident relief of the pupils. Sanitary Habits of the Public Indoor shelter accommodation had been provided for the increased numbers. These would, at a pinch, accommodate 150 pupils. The outdoor shelters were used by the general public from September 10th but this caused problems for Mr Withrington: I regret to report that these shelters have been misused. Entrance doors have been taken down from one shelter, a lavatory curtain removed from its place in another and the entrance to a third has been used as a latrine on at least one occasion. On many occasions the smell inside the shelters has been such as to suggest that the sanitary habits of some members of the general public leave something to be desired. The Ealing Higher Education Committee on 2nd September had given permission for the shelters at Greenford to be used by the general public and Mr Withrington's complaint to the Committee went the rounds of several offices until on 21st September both the Committee and the Borough Surveyor received the following from the Town Clerk: 'I have received reports that the Middlesex regulation concerning cleanliness of the trenches has not been conformed to by the A R P Department. The regulation referred to states that the ARP Authority will be responsible for leaving the shelters in a satisfactory condition of cleanliness by the time the next school session begins. No attempt has been made to have the trenches cleaned and further the day school supply of disinfectant has been almost exhausted as a result of the school having to take the necessary action themselves before school occupation of the trenches following night use by the public. The headmaster of Greenford County School has been in touch with the ARP Officer and was referred to the Cleansing Department but no action has so far been taken to meet this regulation. Would you kindly take the necessary action.' The air raid shelters continued to worry the staff until the end of the war because as the population of the school grew they were barely sufficient to accommodate the increased numbers. Pupils and staff frequently spent half the day working in the shelters. In fact at one stage the pupils had to sit an examination in the shelters while bombs landed barely a mile away. It was June 1943 and the flying bomb attacks had begun. It was the first year that the pupils were entered for the School Certificate Examination (a forerunner of GCSE). In spite of the trying conditions under which the examination had to be taken, of the 47 entered for it, 39 obtained the General Schools Certificate and of those, 22 did very well and obtained matriculation exemption also. Near Miss Many bombs fell close to the school premises including two in the playing field, but only a few panes of glass were broken. On Monday 30th September, a very severe raid took place in the dinner interval. As it was reported: It happened on Monday. September 30 1940, when the Battle of Britain was at its peak. Staff at Greenford County School were taking lunch to several hundred pupils sitting in the school shelters when the distant drone of German aircraft were heard in the sky. Minutes later the school was shaken to its foundations as more than 200 bombs fell in the area. Homes and shops were gutted, streets were littered with wreckage and rubble, gaping holes were torn in pavements. At least 200 people were killed in the area, and hundreds more were injured or made homeless. But, miraculously, the school itself survived. Hours later, when the sirens signalled the end of the onslaught, the building was one of the few of any size remaining undamaged in the immediate bomb-scarred vicinity. Mr James recalled in 1960: 'After the raid we had to send staff round to see if the houses and parents of the pupils were still in existence. Not until then did the police allow us to send the children home, and even then they had to be accompanied because many roads were full of craters.' Several children lost their homes but no parents or children were injured. (Ann Dawes tells me that in 1946-47, during PE periods, those without kit had to put stones into the large craters made by the bombs which had landed on the school field.) Sadly one girl, Kathleen Barrett, lost her life that term - when the S.S. Benares, an evacuation ship, went down. page 29