WALKING TO SCHOOL
When Britain declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939, I was an eleven-year-old schoolboy. I was a day boy at the Swindon High School, and walked there and back each day on my own. It was a distance of about a quarter of a mile. I kept mostly to main streets, but I used to take a short-cut through Balch’s Lane.

Once war had been declared, my school journey altered in two ways. Because poison gas had been used in World War One, the government feared it might be used again and everyone was issued with gas masks. I had to carry mine slung over my shoulder every time I set off for school and when I returned. Also, because of the fear of bombing, there was a national ‘blackout’. All windows had to be blacked out so that no light escaped to the outside and could be seen by German bomber pilots when dropping their bombs. And, of course, all public street lighting had to be switched off.

In the winter, this meant that every night I had to walk home in the pitch dark. This was quite an adventure and there were nonsensical rumours that there were German spies everywhere. Big notices were put up saying ‘Careless talk costs lives.’ But I had nobody to talk to as I walked home, so I wasn’t worried about that. For lovers, the blackout was a blessing. Young soldiers who had nowhere to go with their girl-friends, could snuggle up in dark doorways, unseen by anyone. As I took my shortcut down Balch’s Lane, I became aware that almost every doorway had its loving couple. As I approached a doorway I could hear that they were moving about in some way that I did not understand. As I passed close, they stopped whatever it was that they were doing and remained still until I had moved on. This happened all the way down Balch’s Lane and I found it rather odd. I asked a friend what it was that all these couples were doing and he said, ‘Oh, they were just rubbing up against one another.’ I was too young to know what this meant, and just accepted that it was puzzle.

These daily trips, back and forth to school, lasted until the autumn of 1941, when I was sent off to boarding school. There, we lived in the buildings where we were taught, so there were no more walks to school. But my boarding school had one separate building about half a mile away and sometimes we had to walk back and forth between that and the main school. Part of this trip was down a narrow country lane and there was an incident there that I remember vividly. It was a few days before the great D-Day invasion of Europe by Allied troops and they were training on the plains near my school. As I was walking back to the main school, a military convoy came trundling down the lane. The armoured truck leading the convoy struck my right shoulder as I was walking at the side of the road. The driver stopped, leapt out and rushed over to see if I had been injured. My shoulder was hurting, but I was so embarrassed to be holding up this great invasion convoy that I said I was fine and he reluctantly left me and got back in his truck and the convoy moved off. This was in 1944, when I was 16 and my bones were still developing. The bone that the truck had hit was damaged and never grew as it should. To this day, 81 years later, I still have a small bump on that bone to remind me of one of the many days that I was on my own, walking to school…

Desmond John Morris FLS hon. caus. (born 24 January 1928) is an English zoologist, broadcaster, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology, renowned for his 1967 book The Naked Ape, and for his television programmes such as Zoo Time. He lives in Co. Kildare.
Desmond has written countless books and publications. You can see more about one of his books, Child, where he explores the early development of pre-school children between the ages of two and five, here.
Desmond continues to exhibit his art, most recently at DIVA: THE DUN LAOGHAIRE INSTITUTE OF VISUAL ARTS, Mellifont Avenue. For a full list of his publications and exhibitions, please click here.
On behalf of the Museum of Childhood Ireland and Robert Burns, we would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all of our wonderful participants for their time and their stories. We are thrilled to be presenting this project and we hope you will enjoy following along with us.
You can see more on our When We Were Kings and Queens of the Road project below: