Abingdonian 2020

16 The Abingdonian Fighting the War at Abingdon School, 1939-1945 The grass had scarcely had time to grow on Abingdon’s First World War memorial playing fields before Britain again found itself at war. With only 177 pupils in 1939 Abingdon was a small school, yet 437 Old Abingdonians served in the war, 49 of whom died. Abingdonians played their part in all the theatres of the war: Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Arctic convoys, North Africa, Italy, Normandy, the Rhine Crossing. There was even a Russian speaking Abingdonian who translated for Churchill and Attlee at the Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam conferences. Meanwhile, back in Abingdon, the boys had their own battles to ‘fight’; the first of which was the blackout. One sixth- former remembered returning to school early and spending two hectic weeks using vast quantities of wooden battens and black cloth to make window frames, curtains, roller blinds and lampshades to ensure that the building showed no lights after dark. But according to the Headmaster, Mr Grundy, most of the blackout was achieved by ‘blanking’, making window-sized frames and filling them with two pieces of brown paper stuck together with black tar. Life continued without much disruption until the Germans launched their blitzkrieg in May 1940. Suddenly anything was possible, including the invasion of Britain. Overseen by staff veterans of the First War, the boys frantically dug a trench which they covered with corrugated iron and mounds of earth. It was intended to protect the whole school from aerial bombardment; Grundy was able to reassure the Governors that “in view of possible extreme emergencies” the double-width, 70 yard long trench would accommodate 210 persons, “allowing 2 feet per person on either side.” Because it was felt that this would not be enough, a gun emplacement and look-out was constructed at what was calculated to be a strategic road junction from which the German invaders could be repelled – the corner of Bath St and Faringdon Road. May 1940 was a period of the war that burnt itself into the memories of the boys who were then at school. Do you remember May last year When we dug? Do you recall our silent fear That Hitler and Goering would soon be here, So we set ourselves to a task severe And we dug? That May was a month of rainless skies When shirtless boys mid hungry flies Carved out that trench as a big surprise For a Nazi thug. But the Nazis never came and the trench proved to be too far away from the dormitories to make a very effective air raid shelter so the roof of the gymnasium was strengthened with timber struts and this space, surrounded by sandbags, was used instead. The boys remember hearing the bombers on their way to Merseyside