History


*HISTORY*
MERCHANT NAVY RECOLLECTIONS FROM A Chelsea Pensioner
Chelsea Pensioner Mr Jim Wilson, resplendent in his scarlet uniform coat, with the Atlantic Star, the Italy Star and the Norwegian War Medal amongst his medals, visited the school to talk to GCSE and A Level Historians about his experience during the Second World War in the Merchant Navy. He also told the pupils something about his current life as an In Pensioner at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. Mr Wilson was at sea from 1942 to 1945 in a variety of merchant vessels. His first ship, the RFA Dinsdale, was specially designed as a fuel replenishment vessel for Royal Navy submarines. Unfortunately the first submarine she met was Italian but It took five torpedoes to sink the Dinsdale, despite her deadly cargo of fuel oil. Mr Wilson then spent seventeen days in the Atlantic in an open boat living on meagre rations until he and his shipmates were rescued by a Spanish ship. Eventually Mr Wilson managed to get home to Belfast where he soon signed on for another ship to continue his career at sea. After more voyages in the Atlantic he joined a Norwegian ship in the Mediterranean where he saw out his war service. We are most grateful to Mr Wilson, who spoke to both groups for about an hour each, for making the journey from Chelsea to visit the school and for sharing with us his experiences as a veteran of the Merchant Navy in the Second World War.
RATION BOOK COOKERY
4^th Year GCSE History pupils took a break from notes and essay writing to try out some of the recipes from Second World War cookbooks. What could you make that was tasty on such meagre rations? This was the question which the group set out to answer in the most practical of ways. With each pupil having a free choice from the available biscuit and cake recipes a wide range of tempting wartime treats appeared in the History Room for comparative tasting one Monday morning. It was surprising what could be achieved with so little margarine or sugar, so few eggs – or none at all, and some inventive substitutions. The spread comprised: date loaf, crunchies, pink layer party cake, mock marzipan, eggless sponge, one-egg sponge, syrup loaf, vinegar cake, rock buns, rolled oat macaroons, carrot cookies, and fruity potato cakes. Family memories were stirred by this exercise as one parent remembered the fruity potato cakes having been made for her by her mother who had learnt to make them in wartime.
THIEPVAL VISITOR CENTRE PROJECT- CAKE STALL
Year 10 Historians set up a cake stall to raise money for the Thiepval Memorial Visitor Centre Project charity. Following the lead from the Ration Book Cookery day, all the cakes were cooked according to wartime recipes. The Stall was well supported by their fellow pupils, allowing the Historians to achieve their aim of raising £5 for each of the eight old boys of Thetford Grammar School whose names appear on the Thiepval Memorial.
The impressive Thiepval War Memorial overlooks the Somme battlefield in northern France. The Memorial commemorates the 72,085 British soldiers who lost their lives during the five month long battle of the Somme in 1916 and whose bodies were never found. Perhaps drowned in the mud or blown to pieces by shellfire, there was nothing of them found after the battle, nothing to be buried in one of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries which are to be found all over the battlefield. These 72,000 men are officially categorised as "The Missing", and their names are carved in neat rows on the memorial at Thiepval. The aim of the charity is to build a visitor centre. At the moment there are no facilities to tell the visiting public what the names commemorate. There is nothing to explain the background to the loss of so many men in such an awful battle in such a terrible war. The Year 10 Historians recently studied the battle of the Somme and decided they wanted to support this charity in memory of the eight former pupils of this school who died during the battle and whose names appear on the memorial.
Far East Prisoners of War Exhibition
At the 'Children and Families of Far East Prisoners of War' (COFEPOW) exhibition in the Williamson Hall on Sunday 17 March 2002 the School Archive Group ran a display drawing attention to the work which the school does in highlighting the importance of Remembrance. The display showed what the school has done in recent years on Remembrance Day. The members of the Group also sought help from visitors in identifying pupils on photos from the School Archives from the 1920s and 1930s. The Archive Group was particularly interested in identifying the Old Boys who were killed in the Second World War. Visitors were asked for any memories they might have of the Old Boys concerned. Included in this research area was an attempt to find out about Edward Russell Campbell (TGS 1934 -1938) who will be the subject of the service in November 2002. Members of the Archive Group were fortunate to meet and interview a wide range of people, who had either been prisoners in the Far East or were members of their families. They also sought the reactions of the visitors to the exhibition, finding out what had brought them to the exhibition and learning about what they had discovered from the thousands of items on display about the fate of family members in the Far East.
GCSE HISTORY POSTER PROJECT
GCSE students have completed their studies into aspects of the First World War by producing a series of posters inspired by their visit to the Imperial War Museum.