D M Titcombe Mead’s / Paull’s 1930 – 1933
I was at Mead’s from autumn 1931 for three years, as was my brother 18 months later and my son much later. All of us left a mark during our school years, but my brother and I were able to obtain entry into Medical School when I qualified with a Manchester degree and my brother London.
I enjoyed my time at Aldenham. Life for new boys was fairly tough and it was at least a year before you were allowed to forget your insignificance. The call of ‘boy’ could come at anytime from the House Prefect and the last to get there had to carry out the errand. For a year we had to sing a solo at half term and at the end of term – all the tables and forms in the lower classroom were piled up into an extremely dangerous heap and we had to run over, through or under these, helped along by boys from the senior classroom with ‘potty bats’.
The OTC Field Day was on Berkhamsted Common. I remember my ‘section’ got lost and we spent a quiet time in the gorse bushes.
We were taken to the Royal Tournament at Olympia in ‘General’ buses with solid tyres and we had to push it up Elstree Hill.
I remember seeing the Great Zeppelin fly over the School and I used to run to Radlett when the early passenger plane, The Handley Page Hannibal, was being built and watched its test flights
As I lived in Cheshire I always went home through London and the tubes were relatively new, clean and efficient. My uncle was the Padre at Pentonville Prison and I often spent the night there before going back to school.
I was very nearly interned in Germany at the beginning of the war. I was invited to spend the holiday on the Wolfgangsee in Austria with a friend who had a boat and we raced. I, as his crew. My friend’s father was an Orthopaedic Surgeon, who shared the house with a Jewish Paediatrician from Vienna. One night we had a brick thrown through the hall window. The next morning the police came round and told the Jewish doctor to pack up and go back to Vienna as they could not have incidents disturbing St Gilgen.
Petrol was unavailable and the lakeside was lined with cars marooned. My parents phoned and told me to leave at once by train and I arrived at Dover the day before the Germans went into Poland.