Dover College – in the aftermath of WWII

By an Old Dovorian

Dover College moved back from Poltimore to Dover at the end of the war.   The Normandy landings had taken place on the 6^th of May, 1944 and the Pas de Calais, across the Straits of Dover, was cleared by Canadian troops in September 1944 when the era of German shelling, air raids and V-Bombs on the Kent coast ended.  British troops crossed the Rhine into Germany in March, 1945.  The war in Europe ended on May the 9^th, 1945 with the official surrender of the Germans taken by Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery on Luneberg Heath, ratified in Berlin.

Dover had been very severely bombarded in the war and was known as Hellfire Corner, with many buildings in ruins, including some in the College.   The record shows that 2226 German shells hit Dover as well as numerous bombs dropped by aircraft.  The Gatehouse was propped up with baulks of timber and the front of St. Martins House knocked down by a shellwas still under reconstruction, so we slept in the Refectory for some weeks until rebuilding was completed.

My overwhelming reaction to Dover was the cold.   There was little or no heating, so boys crowded round the radiators to keep warm   The showers ran cold after the first few boys had used them, and so one ran back from the playing fields at Farthingloe or Maxton as fast as one could to get there first.    As disciplined public shool boys we couldn’t complain, of course, and had we had the temerity to do so would have received the standard reply to every such question “There’s a war on!” even thought it had ended.   We had to get accustomed to different routines, because unlike Poltimore where everything was under one roof, back at Dover we moved from building to building for our various classes, which again involving going out into the cold without topcoats, and we had to walk or run in sports gear to Maxton or Farthingloe for games.  It was usually bitterly cold and the wind gusted down the Folkestone road.  I considered Dover the coldest place in England because during the was the BBC only  gave out weather reports for Dover…  Of course only 21 miles away the  Germans could see what Dover weather was like, so no useful information was givenout  to the enemy.

With the end of the war, all schoolboys and girls received a Message from the King dated 8^th June, 1946 which read:

“Today, as we celebrate victory, I send this personal message to you and all other boys and girls at school.  For you have shared in the hardships and dangers of a total war and you have shared no less in the triumph of the Allied Nations.

I know you will always feel proud to belong to a country which was capable of such supreme effort; proud, too, of parents and elder brothers and sisters who by their courage, endurance and enterprise brought victory.  May these qualities be yours as you grow up and join in the common effort to establish among the nations of the world unity and peace.

George R.I.

The teaching staff was still restricted, not only numerically but also in age, because all men and many women of military age were still serving in the Forces.   Thus we were taught mostly by the elderly, some brought back from retirement and pressed back into service.   Only one was young, F.M.White, unfit for military service, who taught me geography, successfully, and ran the Scout Troop.   Others like Bruce-Johnson who were young enough to serve in the Forces didn’t reappear on the scene until later.   My Housemaster,  Alon Ewart, had served in the First War.   The man who taught me English, quite successfully in fact as it was the subject in which I did best, was old Fortescue-Thomas, a retired clergyman who lived at Whitfield and used to ride to school on an old motorbike, who took up teaching to fill a staff gap.   Goodness knows how he had so much success with me, he had a stutter and when he got his words out they were often accompanied by a spray of saliva.  In fact I think this is why I paid attention to his words – it was fascinating waiting to hear his stutter and see the spray!  A sardonic character tried to teach Maths, unsuccessfully, as there was no rapport between us.   The Mon, my Housemaster,  taught chemistry, but didn’t get me through in his subject, which no doubt irritated him.  I enjoyed Physics but forget the name of my teacher.  French was taught by old “Tusky” (R.D.G.Munns) and he was good – very hot on correct pronunciation, and it was this that got me through the viva voce part of my ‘O’ Levels exam with a lady examiner who came to the school, i.e. I suppose I bluffed my way through.   George Renwick, simply nicknamed ‘George’, was our Headmaster through the war and earned high praise, both for the way he ran the school and for getting the school through the war despite extremely low numbers and all its difficulties.

Leamington House had been closed at the beginning of the war for lack of numbers and then re-opened when B-J (Bruce-Johnston), its housemaster,  returned from military service.   Volunteers were drafted from the other three Houses, School, Martins and Priory to fill the house.

In my spare time I wandered around Dover, the sea front and the Eastern and Western Heights.   The Eastern Heights beyond the Castle had plenty to interest a boy as it was littered with the evidence of the war.   Gun emplacements, roads, railways, barbed wire fences and all the impedimenta of war.  The coastal road past Langdon Cliffs to St. Margarets Bay had been closed to traffic throughout the war because there were so many military emplacements there, and only the farmers who worked the land were allowed access.   The Western entrance to the Harbour was still sealed by a sunken blockship and the cross-channel ferries “Lord Warden” and the “Shepperton Ferry” were tied up in the Wellington Dock.  Much of Dover had been destroyed by German shells and bombs, and many of the seafront buildings were rubble.  Visualise the seafront today as it would be with The Gateway flats a pile of rubble.

We were very restricted at school and it is remarkable to see how times have changed and rules eased.  For instance, we were not allowed to enter other Houses, and the House system was extremely rigid.  This was supposed to introduce a competitive element into our education, but in fact it created barriers and blind rivalry.  One did not find friends from other Houses.   Only prefects were allowed to walk on the grass of the College Close, and walking with hands in pockets earned a punishment – remember how cold it was!  We were not allowed in the High Street, but could walk across it.  We had to wear our straw hats (boaters) in summer when out in the town, which earned us contemptuous comment from the town lads.  We could not leave Dover except with permission and the opportunity to do so was extremely limited.  We could not go to the cinema, which was particularly onerous when there was little other entainment available – no television!”.  Pocket money was still a shilling a week – 5p in today’s money!  (I had earned an extra  sixpence a week from the Prefect I fagged for in Poltimore)  None of the pastoral care that is today a strong feature at Dover existed.  Little contact with masters or housemaster, as any attempt would be regarded as ‘crawling’or ‘sucking up’!  The routine was Roll Call, meals (in the house), lessons, games, prep. and then bed.  All rather boring

Hobbies afternoon was a new institution back at Dover and every Thursday afternoon was devoted to the activities of your choice.   My choices were to continue with membership of the Corps and the Scout Troop, both of which did me some good, but in retrospect I would have liked to have done some sailing – but that activity was hard to get into because of  its popularity, and in fact only in the summer term was any actual sailing done – during the other two terms it was boat maintenance and theoretical instruction. Dover won the Public Schools sailing completion around that time.    The Corps was very well run by the “Mon” (Major Ewart, my Housemaster) and later B-J, and proved very good training for my military service afterwards.   Unfortunately, the Corps no longer exists which I feel is a bad thing, because of the skills it taught and the discipline it imparted, but the encouragement of warlike instincts in the young is now politically incorrect.   In any case, I doubt the school now boasts of any suitably qualified Masters who have seen military service to run it.   Little heed is paid to the merits of training in discipline, the physical skills learnt on the assault course, esprit de corps and the achievement and other intangibles that were derived from it.   Dover College also had an Air Training Corps which started quite a number of school leavers on a career in the RAF.   Certainly I feel the Corps was instrumental in helping shape my future to an appreciable extent.

On one occasion Field Marshall Lord Montgomery of Alamain and Normandy fame came to Dover to receive the Freedom of the Town and the Dover College Corps mounted a Guard of Honour on the Close for his inspection, in which I took part.  Years later during my military service I stood on the steps leading to the Officers Mess of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment to welcome Monty back on a visit  to his old Regiment.  He stopped at me and said “I’ve seen you before, have’nt I”.  With chest swelling and  bursting with pride that I should be remembered by the great man, I could only repl weaklyy “yes sir”.  Later I realised that the regimental ADC was walking closely behind him and had whispered something into his ear.  That was one of the  techniques that made him so popular with his men.

Patrick Vanson, with whom I shared a study (with J T Reid and John Shaw), and I represented the School Scout Troop (1st Dover) one summer at a weekend Jamboree with two-boy teams drawn from all the Scout Troops in Kent.   It involved cycling about 30 miles to reach the Park (Leeds Castle grounds, I believe), pitching our tent, constructing a model campsite and doing all the things Scouts were trained to do, including keeping ourselves neat and tidy and well dressed.   My bike got a puncture on the way, and I thought our chances had been dashed when I finally pushed the machine through the checkpoint at the gates, looking and feeling very tired and dishevelled.  It was a hell of a lot of work and no play getting the campsite laid out.  But the reward of our labours was that we came first in Kent!  The wooden trophy was handed to me nearly 50 years later by Pearl White, the widow of our Scoutmaster, F.M.White, who had received it at the time after the end of the term when I left.

I was also in the College Choir and a member of the Choral Society which, augmented by staff, wives and girls from Dover Grammar School, performed some excellent concerts.  I also remember, with horror, being forced to attend concerts by string quartets composed of elderly ladies playing in the unheated Refectory, whilst I shuffled my bottom on hard wooden chairs hoping it would soon all be over.  What a dreadful introduction to classical music – almost amounting to a punishment, I felt.

At Dover, I was able to get the bus to Folkestone where Grandma and Auntie lived and also, until we moved from the Sturry bungalow to Notting Hill, I was able to bus home, but that was a longer journey involving a changes of bus at Canterbury, and I didn’t have the time to do it often.   One did not go home in termtime in those days, it wasn’t the ethos to do so, and I don’t remember I ever went home at half term.  There was usually some activity or other; certainly in the summer when the Scouts went to camp.   One such summer camp was held at Olantigh, near Wye I remember.  There, we were rooted out of our tents at dawn and forced by F M White to run naked into the River Stour to wake us and put some life into us.

Sport was compulsory in those days.   It was also compulsory to go up and watch a 1st XV or 1st XI game when played at home at Maxton.  That took care of many Saturday afternoons, of course.   The standard of coaching in games was nothing like as good as it is today; remember we had many super-annuated teachers and very few keen young men on the staff.   There was no real coaching; one just had to pick it up as best you could.   I had behind me my rather unfortunate experiences at Marlborough where a regime of sport was thrust on us to keep us occupied during the mornings.   However, I achieved something at the High Jump and represented the School in the 120-yard Hurdles in the Triangular Games with Kings, Canterbury and St. Lawrence, Ramsgate where we took 1st and 2nd place (myself in second place to ‘Bull’ Hall) and where I earned my Half Blackmy only sporting achievement.

Each Summer the Scouts went off to Summer Camp for a week or a fortnight.   In 1947, at the end of my last Summer Term at school we went off to St. Aygulf in the South of France, a seaside resort near St. Raphael.   It was a very long journey in a crowded train, not so very long after the end of the war, and there were no seats for us.   We sat in corridors or on the steps of the open carriage doors to get some cool breeze.   After at least 24 hours on the train, with many long stops, we arrived at St. Raphael and were taken to St. Aygulf where we stayed in a partly derelict hotel, still not yet renovated after the war. Filthy loos!  However, it was a superb holiday as we went on trips along the Cote d’Azur to Cannes, Nice, Menton and up into the hills to Grasse, the centre of the perfume industry.   In the evenings, roller skating and watching American films dubbed into French in the open air.  The camp contained young students from all over Europe and I particularly remember the Danes in their student caps and Czechs who were very concerned about the communist rule in their country under the Russian occupation.

On the return trip, I stopped off in Paris whilst the others went on home.   I stayed a week with a French pen pal named Pierre Courtecuisse.   They had a splendid home in a village on the outskirts of Paris, as his father was a wealthy industrialist who owned a factory manufacturing Piles.  Pile “Wonder”, the French “Ever Ready”. It took me some time to discover that Piles were torch batteries and not a medical condition!  When he pointed out an imposing building and named it the ‘loppera’, it took me quite some time to realise he was pronouncing ‘the opera’ in French.  I was also extremely worried when, entering what I thought was the Gents toilet in Paris, I immediately saw a woman in there.  I had to be reassured that she was only the cleaner and it was quite normal to have a woman cleaning the male urinals while one pee-d.

When I returned to England and home to Notting Hill, where we then lived, my education was over.   I had got through Oxford & Cambridge School Certificate with one Distinction (English Literature), three Credits (English

Language, Geography and French) and two Passes (Maths, Physics and something else I forget).   My one failure was Chemistry, and my Housemaster, Alon Ewart never forgave me, as it was he who had endeavoured to teach me.   Only getting a Pass in Maths meant I had failed to gain Matriculation Exemption, i.e. University Entrance standard.   My education came to an end a few days after my 17th birthday, and I had had enough of school anyhow.   Remember too that the school leaving age was not raised from 14 to 15 until 1947!  July, 1947.   I now had to find a job!

A wallet left by my father contains 3 receipted school bills.  In April 1944 the bill was £27.18.0d.  InSeptember 1944 £30.7.4d and in April 1945 £31.1.2d.  I was educated very cheaply which explains a lot.