I seem to recall free milk in a small glass bottle, served at School and in those years also we would walk to Whiston Council offices to collect orange juice and dried egg powder courtesy of Uncle Sam, plus cod liver oil capsules and rose hip syrup to provide vitamin C.At home there was always the on-going quest for enough to eat.A tin of fruit was hoarded until Christmas time, the smallest scraps of meat or vegetables were reused one way or another, finally ending up in bland meat loaves.If you shook a bottle containing milk a small amount of white solid would gradually form on the top after possibly an hour or more. This was used to supplement the small butter ration. Everyone spoke with nostalgia about white bread,as if this had become the symbol of peace and prosperity.

It was also the time of ‘dig for victory.’Many small pieces of garden and countless ‘allotments’ were used to supplement food production.  Prizes for the 3 best potatoes or lettuces became the order of the day. At PGS we also could tend a small allotment to do our bit.We rarely saw fruit, particularly exotics. Just towards Prescot from the School there was a small grocery shop which had an advertisement for Fyffes bananas in the window throughout the war- a small picture of a bunch of bananas. That was my image of the peace and abundance to come one day.

These were drab and rather colourless years. Europe had moved from Depression to all out war, and hardship was part of everyone’s daily lives. Nothing much could be bought in the shops, even if you had the money and most of us did not anyway. Our expectations regarding material goods tended to be very modest- which was just as well. A decent bicycle was a dream for the future, and given that the bicycle was the freedom machine of my generation this was felt as a real deprivation. The normal English habit of rarely bathing was made all the worse in its effects by government urgings to have only a few inches of water in the bath, and to use even that infrequently. Fuel of all kinds and incidentally soap was hard to get and was needed for more urgent tasks than washing grimy boys. The changing room adjacent the Hall cum gymnasium had the rarely seen luxury of showers. They were never used during my ten years at the School.

The smell of hundreds of boys of all shapes and sizes is not a pretty experience, particularly when they wash rarely. Similarly their clothes tended to be far from spic and span. They were usually made from that product of the old Yorkshire mills, ‘shoddy,’ a material which while holding no crease, certainly held the damp and also held the smell. Even though we were so used to body odours that we rarely noticed them, a trip to the cloakroom on a wet day was a far from pleasant olfactory experience. Amazing really how well our mothers managed to keep their families fed, clothed and cleaned at all.

I do not remember much in the way of war talk or propaganda at School. It was a self evident truth that we were on the side of decency and freedom and not a lot more needed to be said about it. Despite the difficulites there was at most modest effect on the actual teaching programme.   The School curriculum went  on pretty much as as ever in its ordained and rather uncritical way. Our education had its very strong points, and I would be the last to be too critical of it,  but it was also somewhat haphazard and owed much to an educational tradition long dying. However that was not a time for asking ‘why’ on such issues.

The War fell into fairly clear stages for us and not surprisingly these related directly to the wider world outside PGS. First there had been the ‘phony war’ when very little happened and fools said it would be ‘over by Christmas.’ Then there was the period of German offensive and constant military setbacks. I think that some of the Mersey ferries went off to join in the miracle lift off the beaches at Dunkirk. This was also the time of the ‘Blitz’ when the full effect of the air war and the U boat war were felt. By 1943 things were not as immediate in their effect . The balance of the war had clearly started to chage.The air raids had dropped off, the old men and the Lewis gun had gone away and the PGS air raid shelters remained unvisited.

There was now the scent of coming victory in the air. North Africa had been turned around, the U boat menace was being dealt with, the Americans were well and truly in the war,and the Russians were not only holding Stalingrad but Von Paulus surrendered what was left of his army, worn out by the ferocity of the Russian winter and the defence of the city. The air war was now hitting Germany and Hitler’s gamble of fighting on too many fronts was now starting to coming back to haunt him.

The issue now was the coming invasion of continental Europe. England was beginning to groan under the mass of men and war materiel being built up for that day. Down Burrows Lane into Knowsley Park Sherman tanks were building up. American soldiers began to appear in increasing numbers and we would approach them with the cry of ‘any gum, chum?’ Burtonwood had a large American air base with flying fortresses, and the night and day bombing raids were underway. Flying Fortresses by day, and R.A.F. Lancasters and Halifaxes (which were replacing the Wellingtons) by night.

The social mileu created by war and emerging from a crippling economic Depression was one which placed a new stress on equality and cooperative activity. People wanted to get away from a class ridden society, a society of ‘them’ and ‘us.’ A new politics was already in the air well before the end of the war. Rationing by other means than the purse could also apply in peace time. It could first apply to health care, and education should become more accessible and egalitarian, and idealistic pictures and expectations flourished.

Then at the beginning of June 1944 the Invasion was clearly on. The roads were jammed as tanks, lorries and the supports of invasion moved steadily down to the South of England and then on to France. That year the PGS soccer team beat Liverpool Institute 4-0 in the finals and we had a trip to Goodison Park to watch.

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