By Tony Watts, (St Catharine’s, 1960)

Long vacations are precious spaces, providing opportunities for students to engage, alone or together, in exciting projects. In the early 1960s, the massive refugee crisis that had followed the dislocations of the Second World War was still leaving its scars. A group of us at St Catharine’s, led inspirationally by Roger Catchpole (1959, NatSci) and John Foskett (1959, Theology; deceased), decided that was where we wanted to make our contribution.

After the War many refugees were settled temporarily in Austria and Germany in Displaced Person camps, often previous concentration camps, in conditions of abject poverty. Among them were Volksdeutsche – ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and the Balkans. There were also more recent arrivals, including from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. World Refugee Year (1959/60) aimed to complete the clearance of people from these camps, but this process continued into the early 1960s. It included provision to help families build their own homes. Our initiative was designed to support this by taking their male children away for a holiday.

Invaluable support was provided by Children’s Relief International, a small charitable organisation with strong Church connections, based in Cambridge. As well as banking our funds and helping with insurance and storage facilities, it linked us to the United Nations Association. Their young and enthusiastic staff selected the boys, found locations for our camps, and met us when we arrived to collect the boys. 

Two- or three-week camps in Austria, staffed largely by St Catharine’s students, were run annually between 1960 and 1964. The later leaders included John Pearce (1960, MML [Modern and Mediaeval Languages]; deceased) and Richard (now Sir Richard) Dales (1961, MML). Other St Catharine’s students involved included David Anable (1959, Agric), Philip le Brocq (1959, English), Tom Boyd (1960, MML), Christopher Marks (1960, MML), David Stableforth (1960, NatSci), Tony Watts (1960, History), Julian Blackwood (1961, Agric), John Brind (1961, MML), Giles Chapman (1961, MML; deceased), Richard Hollick (1961, MML), Geoff Weston (1960, NatSci) and Terry Doyle (1963, MML). A few further team members came from other Cambridge colleges, including Pembroke, Peterhouse and St John’s, plus one from Merton, Oxford; the 1960 camp included two young Swiss women from Cambridge language schools.

In forming our teams, we aimed at a ratio of around one team member to three boys, with at least half of the team able to speak reasonably fluent German (though even the German-speakers had to work hard to understand the boys’ local accents). Other valuable experience and skills included scouting or teaching experience, and medical, catering and van-maintenance skills, plus evidence of enterprise and resilience.

We raised the money and resources for our camps ourselves, chiefly through family and friends, and contacting local firms in our home areas. The mantra we used was that £3 (around £44 in 2019 values) would give a child a holiday for a week. We also borrowed or hired vans (of indeterminate vintage and reliability) and other equipment, and gradually started to buy equipment for repeat usage, including tents, sleeping bags, cooking stoves and utensils – plus (in 1963) a second-hand van of our own.

The philosophy of the camps was based in significant part on the Outward Bound principle of helping young people to defy limitations through learning and adventures in the wild, challenging them to never give up, to change their perspective and to believe in themselves. In addition to providing respite for their parents and a holiday for the children – with a change of atmosphere, environment and diet – we aimed (a) to expand their horizons mentally and physically, (b) to give them the opportunity of expressing themselves freely, (c) to teach them the importance of fellowship and doing things for others, (d) to let them see in a better light the country in which they lived, (e) to show them that someone outside their families took a personal interest in them, and (f) to raise their aspirations for a better life.

We sought locations in the Austrian mountains that would provide us with a base and ready access to woods, streams and climbs. These included a village school with some basic local amenities, but also a remote farmhouse and barn over a kilometre from any other human habitation. The local farmers and other people from whom we bought our supplies were friendly and helpful, and we established good relationships with them. A memorable occasion was when we were invited to join a party to celebrate the shooting of the largest stag shot locally for 25 years: we were plied with the cooked liver and onions, and with multiple glasses of the local slivovitz, returning much the worse for wear. 

Most of the boys were aged 11-14; in 1960 we ran separate camps for younger (8-11) and older (12-15) boys. We encouraged them to come more than once, to increase the chances of lasting impact: in 1963 15 of the 25 had been with us before. Picking them up from their homes gave us a chance to see the conditions in which they lived. Many were from large families of 5-11 children, often with different fathers. A lot had never ridden in a vehicle before, and had never even seen trees. We were struck by how thin many were, and the sense of neglect.

The usual pattern was to spend the first week or so together, getting to know each other, and learning the meaning of fellowship in a community. We then broke into smaller groups, giving more attention to the individual boys, and more freedom to choose and run their own activities. Much time was spent in the surrounding countryside: walking and climbing in the mountains; swimming, dam-building and dinghy-rowing in the streams and rivers; exploring caves; and playing ‘wide games’ in the valleys and woods. All the boys spent some time under canvas away from the bases. We had excursions to local towns and places of interest, including visits to swimming pools and, in one case, a circus. We had football matches – and introduced the boys to cricket and rugby! During bad weather our bases provided room for indoor games and hobbies, including drawing, playing cards, stamp collecting and pressing flowers into books. There were lots of campfires and singsongs.

The boys were expected to help us with the chores of cleaning and preparing meals. We cooked on wood-fired stoves, collecting the wood from the nearby forests. We fetched milk from local farms and ate well, with an emphasis on meat and fruit. The boys emerged looking much healthier. Many learned to cook, as well as other new skills: to swim, for example. 

We had some ‘stroppiness’ to overcome, including bullying, refusal to take part in activities and boys running away. We gradually evolved effective mixtures of toughness and tenderness to manage these situations. We were also, however, impressed and moved by how co-operative, lively and generous the boys in general proved to be. 

We had other crises, including van breakdowns. In retrospect, it is amazing to think of the responsibility we were given, with little if any preparation, supervision, safeguarding or risk assessment.

The UNA staff clearly considered the camps to be of great value to the boys and their families. On one occasion a boy who had been something of a troublemaker at a previous camp (he had once drawn a knife and had to be disarmed) waved down our minibus: he now had a job and emotionally expressed his gratitude for what we had done for him.

Certainly the experience had a great impact on several of us. In 1963, Roger Catchpole and David Macpherson (Pembroke) ran a holiday for the first group of Tibetan children to arrive at Pestalozzi Children’s Village in Sussex. Following a visit by the Dalai Lama’s sister, Roger, David and John Pearce went to Nepal for two years as UNA volunteers to help implement an UNHCR project to build a new village for 600 refugees. Roger also gave a talk to women students at Chelsea College of Physical Education in Sussex which led to them running camps for refugee girls in Austria. 

John Pearce subsequently became an internationally-respected pioneer in community enterprise, prior to his death in 2011. John Foskett, who died in 2017, played a major role in establishing the field of pastoral counselling in the UK. Paul Matthews (Peterhouse) had a career in the United Nations. Julian Blackwood also had a career in international aid through consulting and in the World Bank, including a task for UNHCR concerning Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. Others of us worked in education and in third-sector organisations. More generally, Richard Dales felt that the CHV camps taught us all a lot about resourcefulness, tolerance of discomfort, patience, flexibility and communicating sympathetically across cultural, ethnic, social and linguistic divides, all of which contributed greatly to his own career in the Diplomatic Service. 

In 1962, Dr Stanley Aston, Bursar of St Catharine’s, declared at a meeting with CHV that the refugee problem was ‘a blot on the conscience of the world’, and subsequently helped to establish CHV as a University Venture, to encourage other Cambridge colleges to take part. As a result, the number of camps grew. In the mid-1960s a series of camps were organised by students at Jesus, now celebrated on this website. The last recorded Cambridge CHV camp was in 1975. CRI continued to provide support, but ran into financial difficulties, and was merged into Save the Children in 1977. CHV was also established as a society of the University of Edinburgh in 1963, and continues there, running shorter holidays and outings for local disadvantaged boys and girls.

Our CHV was of its time. But refugees remain one of the main social and moral challenges in our world. Perhaps some elements of our experience may inspire and give encouragement to current students who might be developing their own initiatives.

 

This article was written for the St Catharine’s alumni magazine, and is published here with permission of the author.