Arrival

One coach held boys from the newly opened school (Chingford Grammar School near Woodford), clad in smart light blue caps and blazers. We had known they were on the train but had not had contact with the party previously. Their coach led the way and the rest followed. We left the grey stone buildings of the little town and moved along country roads in the gathering dusk. Sometimes tall trees obscured the sky; sometimes we passed huge rocks and vast stone quarries. Where would we sleep we wondered? As the clock struck 10, we reached an open space, which was town square. It was thronged with people who might have been expecting royally to arrive! We were shepherded along a pathway to the door of the town hall but helpful people pressed forward to assist some children struggling with their cases and took them away from the crowd. Inside the town hall, the children were all given billets and taken away by newly acquired foster parents. By midnight teachers too had been taken somewhere to sleep. What a day! Next day it was quite clear that a number of children had been mislaid. The helpful hands from the crowd had been people who had refused to offer accommodations to children but changed their minds when they saw the first coach of clean children in smart blazers descending! My twelve were quite safely accounted for but it was at least 2 days before everyone was located! School did not start for several days as billets had to be visited and children settled down. Together we explored our new surroundings. We could not believe it, but once again we had trees near us-- miles of them in the beautiful Forest ofDean. Coleford is a small town on the edge of the forest within site of the Welsh hills and from it, roads led uphill in every direction to small hamlets. Most of the roads were rather rough and the children had to walk everywhere, as there were very few buses. Soon their shoes were wearing out and some of the parents back in their home towns couldn’t afford to replace them. Soles were not so tough as now, most being made of leather. The Americans had sent over a lot of clothing for people who might be bombed and we teachers were able to get some boots for the boys from this store kept by the W.V.S. (Women's Voluntary Services a war-time organization) in Gloucester. It was not easy and I’m afraid we even unblushingly told a few tall stories to get all we needed. The other thing happening this summer was that the un-rationed food was getting scarce so things like biscuits, cakes, sardines and other tins and above all Swiss chocolate were very hard to get. We had only one ounce of butter each from our ration books and very little meat. The Forest of Dean has the River Wye as one of its boundaries and fresh salmon was often in the shops under some other name and quite cheap! Vegetables and fruit were plentiful so the children didn’t starve! We were given interesting advice about walking in the Forest where in the summer we found foxgloves and in the autumn sweet chestnuts and blackberries. "If you don’t know the way, keep going uphill and you’ll eventually get to a path for home." We also learned a lot about coal because it is dug out of the forest hillside and we of often came across the tracks along which the "foresters" pushed the laden trucks from the cave where they worked.