Memories - Peter Hoff

I started at school in 1937. We must go back to Dobinson becoming head master in about 1933 and as a young man to be head master in those days at a school like ours. And he started Evenlode which is the school farm. It does come into it because that was the original place we were going to go. We went to the school farm actually for a couple of weeks, in the summer and each form or year had a fortnight there and then some other year went and we each had a chance of going there where we dug. Why I say it has some bearing, we were already into 'not being at home', like the kids are today. We went for a fortnight and nobody got on the mobile phone or anything to find out if we were alright and we were of that mentality when it came to 1938.

In 1938 we had this practice run where we thought we were going to get evacuated and at the last minute when we all assembled at Five Ways, they decided there wasn't going to be a war and we could all go home. Why I'm saying that is you've got to understand the mentality that happened a year later when we did it all again. And we hardly took any notice, "ah go on the farm, go somewhere away", we didn't know where we were going. However, they got us at school and we marched, as you've heard down Broad Street singing songs from respectable or not so respectable songs depending on what age you were, down to the railway station.

Now you've got to imagine there were 320 of us to start with and we'd got gas mask cases and we'd got a haversack and a luggage label with our name on it and that was all we'd got in the world. And we eventually got on a train, we didn't know where we were going, we didn't know anything but it wasn't so matter of life and death where you were going. You were going with the school, they'll be alright sort of thing. However we got on the train and eventually we arrived at this station.

Snow Hill Station

We were Birmingham boys and the little station looked as if it was behind the wood yard and it looked like it was something you played with in the spare room. It was all miniature! However, they marched us to the Rolls Hall where, you can understand how disorganised they all were because they were expecting a girl's school. They weren't expecting boys and the mentality those days was that boys were different from girls, "I don't mind a couple of girls but I ain't having a couple of boys".

However, we gradually went. You stood in Rolls Hall and they gave you a cup of something and you waited your turn. And you stood in your alphabetical order. My brother was a year younger and there was no thought in those days of putting brothers together, they just went Homer, Hollingsworth, Hoff. So Hemmings is next to me, standing there so they said "you two" and a lady appears and she was ancient to us, she must have been all of 25 or 26 and she was an unmarried lady and she lived with her father and she took us round to this cottage.

Now, I didn't realise what a life I'd led until I walked into this cottage and one of the first things she said to me, she wanted to show me, she was not an educated person but she'd got a certain amount of family knowledge she wanted to impart. So she said "Peter will you pass me that little box in that drawer there". And I reached into this drawer and I got this little box and she said "that's the thing for the gas mantle" and I put my hand in it. I'd never even heard of a gas mantle and of course the whole thing crumbled to pieces and they were like four punce each. "Oh!" so I said "I'm terribly sorry".

So we sat down and it is no problem for me to remember, we were in a house with gas, the tap was in the yard, the toilet we shared with 2 or 3 other cottages was a hole in a wooden thing, outside and a cold water tap. There was no lighting. Now I hadn't realised I'd lived in the lap of luxury for the first 12, 14 years of my life and I then got introduced to cottage rudimentary, absolutely the basics.             

1930's postcard of the Wye Bridge, Monmouth

And I was with this other gentleman, Hemming, who now lives in America and we're still in touch with each other, when you say this had a lasting effect, I'm in touch with him because we were billeted together. So Monmouth was a total shock. My mother and father somehow got the petrol to come down and see us and my mother said "well pack your stuff, you're not stopping here are you?"

So I said "yeah well we're all together and my friends are here".

"Oh!"she said "I can't believe it".

We must have been terrible kids because we expected electricity, we expected machinery, not what they've got now but similar and this went on until 1941 and I came home, back to Birmingham because I'd heard a rumour that the school was opening again in Five Ways, which had been a place where they issued ration cards up till then. But they were going to open the school so we came home and what accelerated our movement was that Birmingham had not been bombed. 

The first bomb we came in contact with, landed at the back entrance of Monmouth school on the road, it landed there before Birmingham. So we'd moved to a place where apparently they went down the river, the German bombers, because apparently they came up the Wye, or down the Wye, whichever way they came and went because that was their guidance and when they wanted to accelerate their departure they dropped the spare bombs and that's why there was one at the back of the school. So I pleaded the case with my mother and father that we'd been bombed and they weren't so terribly worried about us coming home. 

I came home early and went in the army, pretty well straight from school so I really didn't have the extensive history of what went on in Monmouth. But the school basically remained there until the end of the war and not many schools did, they mostly dribbled back to Birmingham or London or wherever they went. We were one of the only schools ever to live out the time.

We became friendly with the locals. I believe one of our lads married the girl from the garage, Hunt, and we were very friendly with the dairy product people, Walters, who were the milkmen and we integrated in a short period time. Of course I shouldn't imagine there were more than 5000 people living in Monmouth and the area and a couple or three hundred of us made quite an impact. 

When we got there, the first time we played Monmouth School at rugger, we got beaten 56-nil, then they beat us 36-nil the next year and still ran us ragged, 6-3 the year after that. Because they were good and there was one fellow who later captained Wales, John Gwillam, who had hands bigger than me. But I found out when I came out of the army that the last time we played them in 1945, we won, so at least if it didn't save our lives it increased our knowledge of rugby football.