ABSTRACT
While most parents of boys at Ellesmere College between 1929 and 1950 were very actively involved in their sons' upbringing during their schooldays, there was also a group of boys whose parents were too far away for this, some as far as two or three weeks' sea passage and a journey up country. For these boys the school was both mother and father, sometimes for as long as ten years. One group of boys whose entry into the school was particularly traumatic was the Jewish refugees. Another group of boys for whom the school provided total care were those boys who were cut off from their parents throughout the war. Those whose parents were in Malaya had the most gruelling time, for in the last few weeks of 1941 and early 1942 they endured the intense agony of learning about the lightning Japanese advance through Malaya and then the fall of Singapore in February 1942.
