ࡱ> ?A> 4bjbjqq 4>ee,#0S^`r"0#S.SS#S : William Goodhugh Dawson m. 1943 I came to Christs overnight in December 1942 and Spring and Summer Terms 1943 to take the four parts of 1st MB Examination. My first year from September 1943 including the wartime vacation term of 1944 was with Mr and Mrs Feetham at 12 Emmanuel Road. My second year with vacation term was in rooms H5 of 1st Court. The long vacation terms were to try and compress the normal 3 year Natural Science Tripos into 2 wartime years. Christs was very cold and dark during wartime. During the winter and spring terms we lit our coal fires after lectures at about 4pm when we made tea and ate bread from the Buttery which was un-rationed with our butter ration. The Black-out of all the windows was of course maintained throughout the year. Electric fires were forbidden but Alan Jackson who had been in lodgings with me the previous year had a one bar fire in his rooms on the staircase next to the chapel. One day coming out of lunch we saw thick smoke issuing from his window. The NFS promptly put out the fire and intended returning later to investigate. I was able in the interim to run up the stairs and retrieve the offending fire so there were no recriminations for Alan. This incident was a very well-kept secret but I am sometimes reminded of it by those who knew of it to this day! Interviewed by the Senior Tutor Mr Grose on joining the College in September 1943, he asked if I would be joining the Home Guard or the National Fire Service. I chose the latter and he sniffed disapprovingly but said nothing. I was in a moral dilemma because my mother had adopted Quakerism and disapproved of killing Germans. Also I had had two holidays in Germany, one a school summer holiday with the family of our German maid when I had attended school and had made friends. Yet it was with huge relief that I saw the tide of war now turning in our direction with the victory of El Alamein. With me on the College NFS pump which was towed by a large saloon car were a team of the Chaplain, Ramsay, later Bishop of Durham, who was very heavy to carry when practising the firemans lift, and several others who achieved fame as clergymen. They included Eric Heaton, Peter Baelz, Tony Dumper and Jock Wilson. The first two were successively Dean of Chirstchurch Oxford, and Peter Baelz was later Dean of Durham. Peter Baelz had been a conscientious objector and so had passed over for Head boy of Dulwich School. Eric Heaton was medically unfit. Also I believe clerics and those training for Ordination were exempt from military service from a long tradition of priestly disqualification from shedding blood. A Norman bishop of Hastings absolved himself by wielding a club! We trained one evening during the week whereas the Cambridge Battalion of Home Guard, motto Silence is Golden, trained on Sunday mornings. In our lodgings on Saturday evenings I frequently found my two co- lodgers cleaning guns in front of their respective hearths! Our trailer pump was quite powerful and could project a stream of water from Second Court over to the Fellows Building. The College roofs were covered with ladders for access in case of fire and rather miraculously I have found an old photo taken by Jim Long who occupied the rooms opposite me which is enclosed. Jim was a state scholar from Peter Symonds School Winchester. I did not realise until he told me perhaps 50 years later how straightened he was financially he was at Cambridge so much so that he bought bread in a Cambridge shop instead of the Buttery as it was a half-penny cheaper! I did not discover until my father died in 1976 that his employer Mr. Trotter, a Deputy Governor of the Bank of England had helped with the cost of my medical education. My fathers salary was 350/ year and my mother worked as a teacher and later as the wartime head teacher of a hospital school. She later became HMI Education but without a degree! She had caught the eye of Mr. Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary during the War. Most of the students at Christs during the war were on Short Service Courses of 6 months before training as officers in HM Forces. Christs was a poor choice for medical students but my headmaster Mr Castle of Leighton Park wished to distribute his sixth form around the various colleges and he was not a scientist. The lucky ones were those who went to St. Johns where the tutor was also the dynamic lecturer in the Anatomy School, and Human Anatomy was the big subject we all had to master if we were to become doctors. Our tutors had to come from outside the College. They were Dr Harris for Anatomy and Dr Parsons for Physiology and the new subject of Biochemistry. Neither of them must have found our group of 4-5 medical students very inspiring. Dr Harris stayed for the statutory hour and Dr Parsons spent a good deal of the time filling and lighting his pipe. I should mention that during lectures the great majority of students and lecturers smoked. The handful of women members who were not then members of the university, sat in the front row. Ian Seppelt and I had one carefully monitored tea invitation from two of them to Girton College. Fortunately I never started smoking because I didnt know how my father was financing my education and didnt want to waste his money. Many relieved the ever present wartime tension by smoking. My mother started but was able to discontinue after the war. My younger brother died some years ago as a result of the habit. To go back to the NFS, I was in some ways fortunate in being given a driving licence without any formal driving instruction or examination. We had to reverse the appliance and saloon car into the Masters Garage after exercises away from the College. On one Sunday morning I recall driving to Royston. However, one evening when the Air-Raid warning had sounded and in the total darkness of the Black-Out I was reversing into the garage. Unusually, no one was guiding me. I think the other members of the crew had taken cover as they thought they heard gunfire or enemy aircraft. In any case I managed to hit and split one of the main posts of the garage. I was told to expect disciplinary action. However, the following night the Masters wife, having secured a small amount of petrol had the same experience causing further damage, so I heard no more about it! The Master was, of course, Professor Raven, a distinguished Theologian and also a well-known pacifist. We saw him seated at high table and in Chapel with Mr Grose but otherwise had no contact except for the one occasion when we were invited to the high table. This would have been the summer of 1945 when the fighting in France was at its height. We assembled for sherry in the Senior Combination Room. After a substantial meal we returned there for strawberries and cream. I was rather taken aback by so much luxury when thousands of our fellow-country men were fighting for our survival; in fact shocked would not be too strong a word! We were brought up with the knowledge that King George V had ordered a very Spartan life at Buckingham Palace during World War 1 and had even insisted in serving water to his guests! All meals were taken in Hall, although hot meals could be brought to your rooms by your gyp if requested. There were two sittings for dinner for 1st and 2nd year students respectively. Great efforts were made to provide an adequate diet and we collected our tea, butter, margarine and sugar rations in small bottles from the Buttery and purchased fresh un-rationed loaves. On Wednesday we often had pigeon pie at lunch. However the calorific value of the diet was not high. Jim Long used to feel very faint after rowing and indeed the diet was not adequate to support that sporting activity. One evening at Hall I glanced up at high table and recognised the unmistakable figure of Field Marshall Smuts with his pointed beard. Nothing had been said because of course careless talk cost lives. No account of wartime Christs would be complete without some details of domestic life in rooms. Mr Hughes, the gyp on H staircase, bought us tea and shaving water at 7:30 and we were in Hall for breakfast at 8:00 Lectures would start at 9:00. The Junior Combination Room to the left of the Main Gate would be closed so we glance at the newspapers before lectures. During the morning Mr Hughes would empty out our washbowls and chamber-pots as the nearest toilets in second court were too far away to walk to in the night. There were no drains to wash bowls in our rooms. We would make the bed and clear the ash from the fire-place, wash any cups and dishes and tidy our rooms. He would make the bed and clear the ash from the fire-place, wash any cups and dishes and tidy our rooms. With the wartime conditions his wife looked after another staircase on the other side of 1st Court. These staircases where Jackson and Seppelt lived, my former co-lodgers in Emmanuel Road had the advantage of some modernisation with washbowls with drainage. Mr. Hughes also served meals in Hall. I got on very well with him. He was always cheerful and encouraging and seemed quite satisfied when I gave him 1 at the end of term. What other memories? The only Fellow I remember was an elderly batchelor, I think Dr Marshall, who had been an early researcher into female hormones using rabbits. He gave a drinks party in the Fellows Garden at which there was a good deal of drunkenness. On V.E. Day all the College flags in Cambridge were flying. I had tooth ache and managed to find a dentist to extract the tooth. At the long vacation term of 1945 there was an atmosphere of euphoria. We took a course in Pharmacology. I had to take Physiology a second time after failing to achieve a satisfactory mark in the Tripos. We also attended a course of introduction to medicine at Addenbrookes Hospital and saw many wounded men at the Leys School which had been turned into a military hospital. And so the war in Japan ended with the atomic bomb. I left Cambridge to commence clinical studies at St. Bartholomews Hospital in London. During the Easter Vacation of 1945, I was detailed to serve for one week at the fire station at Oxted in Surrey. I returned for the Summer Term wearing my NFS uniform in a train full of men mainly on short leave from the front. I felt rather embarrassed and ashamed. I received some strange looks but nobody said anything to me. Although we were considered by many to be D-day Dodgers we did work very hard with little relaxation for sport or other interests. I did take part in singing Trial by Jury and also found time to listen to Mr. Bevin speaking in the square before the election after V.E. Day. Habitually we would study to midnight every night, often in cold rooms when our coal ration was exhausted. One Sunday morning I caught three mice in the space between the woodwork below the window! Conditions were very primitive by modern standards. We had a measured bath every week in the bath house where the new library now stands and I occasionally bathed in the swimming pool. In summary the atmosphere at Christs during wartime was far from bellicose. The Master was a known pacifist although as far as I know he did not parade this fact during his Mastership whereas a few of the bishops did speak out about the bombing of some German cities. 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