The Wadsworth Family Letters: first-hand accounts of life at King’s during the Second World

“Do look after your sweet self. Dad has his own idea of whereabouts you are but I read the papers and am afraid I always imagine you are in the thick of things. Thank goodness I have my two optimists to brighten things for me! They are doing their stuff these days full time. However, a letter from you is a tonic to us all. Such heaps and heaps of love ever and ever – we are with you every minute wherever you are.” (Letter from Dorothy Wadsworth to her son Derek, 20th February 1944)

Brothers Derek and Robert (Bob) Wadsworth were pupils at King’s in the 1930s and 1940s. Derek left the school in 1941 and, like other 18-year-olds at the time, went straight into the armed forces. After completing his officer training, he was sent to North Africa in November 1943 and later served in Italy. His younger brother Bob was a pupil at King’s for the remainder of the war.

Bob, Dorothy and Harry (Derek and Bob’s parents) sent several letters to Derek whilst he was abroad. These have remained in the family ever since. Derek’s son Chris, also a King’s alumnus, has kindly shared some of the correspondence with the school archive.

The letters reveal a great deal about daily life at King’s during the war. As a school, as friends and as colleagues, the King’s community worried about loved ones, mourned those they had lost – but also persevered. Lessons, lunches and exams took place in air-raid shelters. School plays and concerts carried on. In the summer, pupils helped farmers to bring in the harvest. Those left homeless by bombs were taken in by others. Perhaps most spectacularly of all, when – in February 1944 – school buildings were left devastated by falling bombs, pupils, parents and staff worked tirelessly on a clean-up operation that meant the school could open again less than a week later. Bob was one of those pupils who helped not just with sorting out the mess but with the re-glazing of buildings. Dorothy, meanwhile, was co-opted by the head master’s wife, Mrs Dixon, as she explained in a letter to Derek: “I am meeting Mrs D at 10am equipped with soap, polish, dusters etc. and we're off for a ‘scrub-up’.”

Despite stepping on an anti-personnel mine in Italy in December 1944, Derek arrived back in the UK in February 1945, minus his right leg and a finger from his left hand, but otherwise well.

“You're a clumsy blighter really! Walking on a mine is a very careless thing to do, but I can understand it is quite easy to do. We all hope you're comfortable now and eating more. Don't let that thirst run away with you. Please excuse my writing but it always deteriorates in the middle of the holidays.”  (Letter from Bob to Derek, 4th January 1945)

Read more about the letters here.