Cairndhu in WW2

Cairndhu- WW2 had started when we went to school. Because of the shortage of paper, we had slates with a slate pencil that made marks on the slate. If you made a mistake, all you had to do was wet a finger and rub it out, which was handy if you felt your neighbour had a better answer than you.
Our early teachers were maiden ladies who might have been married if a whole generation of eligible young men had not been killed in WW1.
The first of these ladies, motherly Miss Draffan, wore brown woollen clothes that she knitted herself and smelt vaguely of moth balls. She gave some of the less fortunate children their first touch of gentleness and encouragement.

      While anyone who dared to talk when she was saying something was 'shushed' by the class, those who might struggle with a word like ‘cat’ or ‘mat’ would be given stage whispered help. If you got help, you had to decide who was right, usually a girl, because there were sniggering boys who thought it was funny to mislead you.

      Miss Draffan had a complement for everyone's scrawl on their slate. There were special pencils for the slates and as the quality deteriorated as a result of the war, they could be made to screech across the slate. Girls didn’t do things like that, of course, their mission was to call out 'it was Jim Scott, Miss'.

       After some laborious copying of letters with tongues stuck out following progress, the slates were put neatly in the corner as only a class of five year olds can; the boys closely supervised by the girls, who straightened any slate that was out of line.

 http://sullatoberdalton.com/books/land-fit-heroes