Our Veterans Project

One ordinary Friday in June an innocuous looking e-mail arrived inviting applicants to take part in the 2005 Veterans’ Project. A positive reply started an exciting chapter in the history of our school.

We decided to apply to take part in Cheshire’s Big Lottery Veterans bid for two reasons. Firstly, Key Stage 2 children were due to study ‘Britain since the 1930s’ and secondly we have a lively set of Senior Friends who enjoy taking part in school activities.

We were very fortunate to receive a grant of £3,250 which has given us the freedom to take part in a range of activities we would not ordinarily have been able to afford. We are very committed to the ‘Broad and Balanced Curriculum’ in which trips are an integral part of the learning experience for children, but we try to avoid asking for too much money from parents and so keep costs to a minimum.

 We began by purchasing class sets of books. Teachers chose ‘Carrie’s War’, ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ and ‘The Blitz - a diary of an Evacuee’. These were used together with a wide variety of other sources to introduce children to life during the Second World War.

In September, the Day Star Theatre Company performed ‘Put That light Out!’ to a mixed audience of children and senior friends. The performance was followed with workshops where each class developed a role play with a small number of grandparents. Some of the adults found it quite an emotional experience, partly looking back at the past but also working with children and remembering their own primary school days.

As part of the bid for the grant we committed to producing a web site which would reflect children’s writing, art work, photographs, memories of our senior friends and include our film. Preparation began in the making of the film, ‘Rode Heath Evacuees’ in October. Mrs Wiskow, as director, ensured that all children knew the part in ‘Carrie’s War’ where the children were waiting for selection after they had been evacuated to the country. The plot of our film was very simple. We were to become an inner city school in 1939 that was to be evacuated by bus and train to the countryside. The billeting officer would record which family each child had been billeted with. In the end two children were left uncomfortably perched on hard wooden seats as no one liked the look of them!

We hired costumes for adults from the local drama resource centre. The children made gas mask boxes and labels in school and parents dressed the children in clothing and with hair styles suited to the early 1940s. Filming began in the playground and then on to Foxfield Steam Railway. Several parents and grandparents also joined us in costume which really added to the authenticity of the atmosphere. The filming of the train trip was very jolly. The younger children took part in an improvised selection process, which was not filmed, and then they were taken on to Hanley Museum to look at the War time displays and the Spitfire. The older children stayed to re-enact being chosen to live with a new family. One particularly poignant moment was when a prospective parent looked behind a boy’s ears to check that he was clean enough to live with her. It was a moving reconstruction. We were all aware that sixty years earlier this had been a very real experience for many children. They must have felt a strange mixture of emotions including sadness, apprehension and excitement all mixed together.

The finished film is delightful, enhanced by war time music and newsreel soundtrack which adds to the sense of period. Having realised that the product was superior to the usual video film we make as part of our history projects we decided to hold a film premiere. Parents and children dressed up in all their finery and we managed to get hold of a red carpet. Canapés with lumpfish roe were served, alongside fruit juice and lemonade from plastic champagne flutes. Several VIPs were invited and a good time was had by all. Following this event, our senior friends requested a special showing of the film with a sing song, so in late November the school resounded to ‘Blue Birds over the White Cliffs of Dover’ amongst other wartime favourites. 

Two of our special guests at the film premiere were Irene and Frank Worrall. We met them initially at Congleton Museum. In November our Years 3 and 4 were finding out about local events during the war. Irene had been evacuated with her school from Manchester to Mow Cop in 1939. She told the children about her experiences and on the way back to school she accompanied the children on the coach to Mow Cop and found the house that she had stayed in as a girl. You can playback the entire interview with Frank and Irene on the Congleton Musuem pages of this website.

Years 5 and 6 went to the War Museum in Salford in November looking at aspects of war and peace. They considered how the architect Daniel Leibskind has designed the building to reflect the confusion of war. In December all the juniors performed a musical play called ‘Peace Child’. The play examined a situation where conflict had developed between two opposing tribes and how, through personal sacrifice, war was avoided. It was outstanding on many different levels.

The project concluded at the end of January 2006 with a trip to the Stockport Air raid Shelters.

This web site is a reflection of some of the experiences and the work it has inspired. In addition to the children’s contributions, we also have available oral histories including accounts of the day the incendiary bomb was dropped on Rode Heath. The involvement of our senior friends in the project has been most helpful. We hope that they understand how important their memories have been in the learning journey taken by the young people at this school.