World War Two

Ronald Leedham: Geography


Here Ron describes learning geography during the daily wartime news discussions.


I can’t remember what happened in the juniors, but in the seniors...(laughs) the first half hour or something like that, the teacher, he kept us up to date with what was going on in the war. We had the blackboard up there and he had the newspaper with him and he’d draw where the front line was that morning or whatever or that day before and all these arrows sweeping everywhere, you know the sort of thing.
And that’s where you learn your geography, believe it or not. I learned more geography about Russia, the Middle East, Libya, anywhere in Europe and where the war was going on, from the war than I ever did on anything else. We were all well up on where the different towns were and what the countryside, what the terrain was like, whether it was good tank country or not, it was absolutely marvellous. And we also loved the first hour of school, it was all what we wanted, us boys, you know what boys are like.

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