Children evacuated from the towns to rural locations during World War Two experienced their early lives at church and school in a traditional setting that seemed to have been preserved for many generations. By this process, a large part of the population raised at that time became reconnected with pastoral roots that in some ways stretched back to before the Industrial Revolution and the rapid urbanisation of England. But the experience was not altogether idyllic, due mainly to the fact that not all the ways of the past were better than the ways of the present.
Anglican high church, even in a small village, imprinted an indelible impression on a pre-school mind. With the church full of people in their pre-war Sunday finery, beneath the technicolour display of the stained glass windows, a rousing organ anthem initiated a white-robed procession of priest, elders and choristers sweeping in behind the incense-bearer, proudly swinging his smoking bowl in a wide arc to ensure an effective distribution of its fragrance. It was a spectacle to be remembered, but it wasn't realised until later that the significance of the ceremony was never properly explained. Instead, the children were given little coloured pictures, with texts that could not yet be read, and adhesive backs for licking and fixing in an album.
In those days, many village schools belonged to the church. Services on Sunday may have been dull, but they had interludes of light, sound and scent and presented no direct challenge. School, when it came, proved to be not only dull but full of menace. During the war, with many men away in the armed forces, the primary schools were mostly run by women. The teacher of the first grade was a formidable plus-size woman with a reputation to match. She was a back thumper. Starting at the back of a row, she would progress forward, inspecting the work of each child in turn. The five-year-olds quaked, hunched over their desks, not daring to look back, and dreading the fate that they knew would befall them, as the thumps and yells grew steadily closer.
In the playground one day, the teacher had the children dance in a circle holding hands. One boy stumbled and fell, grazing his knee on the gravel. As blood trickled down his shin he asked to drop out, but was compelled to stay in the ring until the dance was over. Parents grumbled about such barbarism but these were days before teachers or doctors could be challenged by the hoi polloi. Hopefully, these temporaries were retired when the regular teachers returned to post. They served their country in its hour of need, and helped to perpetuate some old ways while the world waited for a new dawn.
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