TO Serve them all my Days Part VI

As the 1930s progress there is something of a move to the Left, even among the middle and upper classes. David finds that quite a few of his pupils are sympathetic to the socialist movement or at least anti Hitler. THe ethos of the school is less old fashioned Tory. He and Christine both feel that in the end, it is probably going to come to war between Britain and Germany and David finds himself getting involved again in the OTC though he had always believed that he would never do anything to support a military organisation. He misses Howarth, and Algy Herries is getting older and not able to visit so often. He is pleased when Boyer, who was one of his first pupils when he came to Bamfylde accepts a job in the school. He had trained as a teacher and found it impossible to get work in a bigger school, and then he married a Scottish girl who had no money... Boyer comes back and settles into life in his old school and David has an old friend at his side. Christine is busy with her teaching and her baby, and Grace is now grown up and training to become the school secretary. She has 2 boyfriends whom she has known at school for years and David wonders if she will marry one one of them. Keith Winterbourne is an aristic gentle young man, and Hoskins has become a musician, playing with a band. Grace decides to marry Hoskins who is a cheerful jolly chap and they get engaged, as he is going into the Army. In 1939 War finally breaks out and David knows that he will soon be facing a shortage of teachers just as Herries did in the last War. a few months into the war, he finds a young man who has health problems and whose wife is also in poor health, so he can rely on him to stay out the war years and not get called up. The man has a degree and some teaching experience and David feels that history is repeating itself, though he is sad at the knowledge that many of his pupils are now in the forces and may be killed. Christine is pregnant again. He knows that life is going to be difficult but feels relief that the war has at started and Britain is on the right side.