Saturday 9th September 1944

I have just finished my first week at the new school. That's Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, Junior School, in Sutton.  When I was telling you about the entrance exam, last March, I promised I would let you know how I got on, once I had started.

It could have been worse. I've learned quite a bit. Some more arithmetic, English, history and writing. But also quite a lot about how to fit in somewhere, which has all been very strange to me. I didn't realise before but I've found out that I am a lot younger than most of the boys there. They seem to be all nearly 10 or 11. But my ninth birthday is until next April. I don't quite know how that has happened. But I'm not finding it easy. A year is a long time when you're only eight. They are all much bigger than me, seem to know much more than I do and find it easy to make new friends quickly. Probably some of them have come from the same school and are already friends. What I now know is that if anyone has a go at you, you do NOT say "But I am only eight". That just makes it worse. I've only made that mistake once. I only know one boy who was at the same school as me. He sits in one corner of the classroom and I am just in front of him. His name is Fairey. This is him. He used to be called Michael.

There is another boy, called Smith J., who I noticed on the first day. He's got a round face and is always running around with his friends. He lives in Goosemoor Lane, Erdington which has had quite a bit of bombing. It seems that he has got into the habit of running everywhere. I wonder why. I find it far easier to walk or, better still, sit down. If I knew him better I would know the answer. When he was at his other school, he always ran to it in the morning and then ran back home in the afternoon. He had got it all worked out. The quicker he ran, the less likely he would be to have a bomb fall on him. I suppose that sounds pretty sensible.

On the first day I found out that our classroom isn't the one where we had sat our entrance exam last March. I told you about that before. You have to walk through that room and then there is another one, of the same size. The windows all still have tape over them, in a sort of diamond pattern. It's supposed to stop the glass flying about if a bomb drops. They are high up in the wall so that you can't see anything if you look out of them when you are at your desk. Except for the sky and the top of other buildings. You aren't supposed to do that anyway, not during a lesson. Our teacher is the elderly man who had read the story of the crow and the pitcher to us when we took the entrance exam. Mr. Gifford. We soon learned that his nickname is Goofy. But you don't call him that. Of course you don't. You just call him "Sir". And he calls you by your surname. As do all the other boys. This has been a bit of a shock at first. Up to now I have always been spoken to as Christopher. The surname thing isn't very nice. But you start to get used to it. And it makes you feel quite grown up. Anyway, I have never been very happy with the name my parents gave me. It sounds too - I don't know what - not posh, but not like other boys' names, probably a little bit stuck-up. Wish my name was Johnny or Dave or Mick. As for the other TWO names I was given, well, I'm not going to talk about them. They're worse than the main one. A friend of my mother's once told me I shouldn't hate them - one is my father's name and the other the name of the King. That made me think a bit. But I still don't like them.

This is me, by the way.

Like I told you before, you get to the classroom by walking down a path from the Lichfield Road, by the side of the main school building. On the other side of the path is rough ground, lots of it, and we can play there during break or when we have finished dinner. Then you turn right into a sort of short tunnel, right through the building. The floor is all cobbled. There are two doors on the right side of this tunnel.  You don't go anywhere near the first one - that leads into the part of the school where strange, fierce boys called boarders live. You wouldn't dare to set foot inside there and you certainly wouldn't want to anyway. The thought of being caught and dragged through that door is enough to give you nightmares. No, you go through the second door where there is a lavatory and rows of pegs to hang up your coat, if you are wearing one. And then, on the other side of the tunnel, is the door which you go through to get into the first classroom. This is where the older Junior School boys are taught.  By a man called Mr. Knight. We all go through that room into the second one which is our classroom.  So there are just two classes in the Junior School.  And there won't be any more after we have had our two years there. That's because we are the last class, ever.

Mr. Gifford takes us for nearly all our lessons. Some of the stuff is new, some of it is what I did at Sandwell School in Streetly. He is teaching us how to write in copperplate and we have to write the same letters over and over again. Arithmetic. English - how to write proper English, spelling, punctuation. Stories from history. One of the best bits is when, some afternoons, he stands in front of the class and reads to us. At the moment it's a smashing book about Africa.  I think it's called "The Man-Eaters of Tsavo". Once a week we go through the main school to the gym.  The master there is quite an elderly gentleman, Mr. Bradley. He's not very tall but is very muscular and he looks very healthy indeed. He wears a white vest and has a whistle on a cord around his neck. We are kept on the move most of the time. I don't think I'm ever going to enjoy it much - I'm not strong enough, I don't think.  Some of the boys climb up the ropes like monkeys or swing about on the bars. I'm hopeless at all that - and especially the ropes. And if you know you are not very good at something, you just don't like doing it. One afternoon a week is games afternoon. We troop down to the playing field with Mr. Gifford and change in a sort of shed. We play footie. The goal posts look funny but I think they are really goalposts for rugger which they play in the Senior School.  I think you are allowed to pick up the ball in that game. That sounds very strange to me.

So we leave the classroom for gym and football, just once a week. But every day, at about 12.00, we find our way to a huge room deep inside the main school.  It's called Old Big School. It's vast and when you go into it it smells of brown gravy and cabbage. We sit down at a long table to have our dinner and we need to finish before the rest of the school is ready to pour in. You've hardly got time to look around. But I've noticed one or two things, even so.  There's a huge painting there on the wall, of Henry VIII. He stands there in his fine robes, looking at every single one of us. You just can't avoid it - his eyes follow you everywhere. We are all fascinated by that, every one of us. All the walls are covered with brown wooden panelling.  And on nearly every panel there are lists of names and dates, written in gold paint, some ever so brightly because they are newish, but most of them duller because they were painted on ages ago. I haven't seen all the headings yet - and won't understand many of them anyway. But one says "Victor Ludorum" - whatever that means.  And another, "Roll of Honour". Sometimes the same name is on more than one list.

And so that's what I think about my first few days at my new school.  It's a bit of a palaver to get there. It's a mile walk from home on the Chester Road in Streetly, down Manor Road, then down Thornhill Road to catch the 101 Midland Red which will be standing waiting by the railway bridge in Streetly Village. Then off at the Boswell Road stop in Sutton. Back the same way. And that happens every day AND on Saturday morning. I'm pretty worn out when I get home, I can tell you!  Mum took me all the way for the first day or two. I think she feels I know what to do now, and will be very careful crossing the Lichfield Road in the afternoon to catch the bus on the other side. So now she just walks with me to and from Streetly Village. I think that before long I shall be allowed to do the whole journey by myself.  That will make me feel very grown up!

I know the names of the boys in my class already. There's Arthur, Bendall, Box, Britton, Burr, Craig, Davies, J., Davies, P., Dwyer, Easthope, Evans, N., Evans, P., Fairey, Hardy, Hateley, Holland, Horton, Lewis, Myers, Oram, Outhwaite, Payne, Rew, Roberts, Smith, G., Smith J., Suddens, Thomas, Wainwright, Welch, Wickes, Worman. I think that's right and it is about all of them. I expect I shall get to know some of them very well indeed.  Especially if I eventually get into the Senior School.

So that was my first few days at my new school. I hope I haven't been boring you too much.

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As always, there's a lot happening in the wide world, beyond us here in Streetly and Sutton. This week we have liberated Brussels and Antwerp. The poor Poles are having to fight in the sewers in Warsaw, with nobody doing anything to help them. Finland is making a peace treaty with the Soviet Union and won't have anything more to do with Germany. Bulgaria is declaring war on Germany and Romania has already done the same thing -  although none of all that means much to me.

The Germans surrendered Paris a couple of weeks ago. I saw all that in the newsreel at the Avion in Aldridge. A French Resistance fighter grabbing a rifle from an injured German soldier, who is lying in the middle of the street as the bullets fly around. Something exploding in an open lorry full of German troops and some of them falling out of the back of it onto the road. The running, the taking cover and running again and, especially, the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire - I could feel that in my tummy. Oh, the excitement of it all! I started to wish that I could have been there....... but I knew, really, that was a daft feeling to have because it must all have been frightening and horrible.

And what about my brother, Graham? He's still in Italy. Although in fact, he isn't! After liberating Rome, which I told you about last time, he moved further north and was often in action. At places I've never heard of, San Oreste, Viterbo, Collena, Orvieto, Castiglione del Lago. One ruined town or village after another. Near Lago Trasimeno his battery came under a big artillery attack which caused several casualties. It was very accurate indeed and went on for a long time. Later he found out that a local civilian had been caught directing the firing by wireless. "I never found out what happened to him....."

Some time last July Graham and everyone else was told that the war was only going to last a few months and that his unit was going to be withdrawn and moved to the Middle East, eventually to return to be part of the Army of Occupation. So, after handing over their guns to another unit, they all headed south, past Rome, past Cassino and all the other places where they had fought, and caught a ship to Egypt. He has had a good time there, training, doing artillery exercises, learning to swim, sitting on the banks of the Suez Canal. Shouting "You're going the wrong way" to blokes on troopships heading east, to India and Burma and places like that.