We didn’t have it so cushy

Rick Jackson regrets missing out on his schooldays overnight trips to the Swanage YMCA (‘I was a wimp when it came to school camps’ News 20th April).

We war baby youngsters didn’t have anything so cushy as roofed accommodation. In the late ‘40s and ‘50s summer hols, the Bucks School Camp occupied a field above the Isle of Wight’s Seaview with hundreds of youngsters living in tents.

An advance guard of teachers and education staff (including my dad) trundled down the old A3 in retired Pickford removal lorries loaded with tents and all the gubbins. The lorries hardly managed the hills at Rake and Hill Brow, with passengers having to get out and push, before loading onto the ferry down The Hard slipway. It took a week or so erecting dormitory tents and catering and assembly marquees for rainy days and evening film shows. The hardest job was digging massive latrines with plank seats and hessian screening.

Primary school children arrived the first week, their first job being to fill their palliasses with straw for covering truckle beds. Swimming parade was every morning, with shivering teacher volunteers forming a hands-linked human seaward chain as the kids splashed around – many having never seen or been in the sea before.

Volunteer school canteen staff provided plain but copious meals on tin utensils (plastic not then being common) from giant vats. Evenings saw film shows of Laurel and Hardy movies on a noisy projector, the audience seated on straw bales. A resilient lot in those still strict-rationing years, very few showed any sign of homesickness or discomfort.

Older pupils came the second two weeks, followed by the break-up crew. It was then much discussed whether it was worse being the advance guard digging the giant cesspits in the heavy clay, or the rearguard filling them in after massive usage in what were occasionally hot months. A few years ago a plaque on the Seaview field gate recorded the Camp’s presence, and is maybe still there.

Bob Smyth Emsworth

A resilient lot, few showed any sign of homesickness or discomfort