I have divided my memories into a bit of Social History followed by School 1936 – 1940.
I was in School House Evens when the Headmaster, George Riding was our Housemaster, but for obvious reasons, the day to day running of the House was the responsibility of two House tutors – Rupert Clift (Evens) and Alan Webber (Odds). It was a tragedy that Mr Clift who was a great benefactor of the School should die in April 1937 as a result of an accident playing Fives. He was replaced by Bill Kennedy, known to us boys as ‘Snooper’.
Pages 72 – 99 in the 12th edition of the Aldenham School Register, give an accurate and interesting picture of School life in the 20’s through to the 50’s. I can certainly vouch for the contents including Sergeant Major Buckingham falling backwards into a stream at Bordon Camp (page 81) – I was one of the Guards being drilled and found it funnier than Buckingham did! I also shared with J P Mead the experience of the Potty Bat at the hands of Sprent. Four of us out of bravado rather than dishonesty had taken a short cut when on a run round the Res only to find to our horror that Sprent was standing at the main gate with a notebook in hand; a laconic instruction to report to his study in Mead’s after Prep introduced us to this ‘old fashioned’ weapon. Unlike the anti-corporal punishment lobby I do not feel brutalised or turned into a criminal by either the cane or the potty bat.
When I was 17 early in 1940 I followed my father into the Royal Navy, which he had joined in 1905 before transferring to the Royal Air Force when it was formed in 1919 and went to war. I had an interesting 20 years followed by my first love – Dairy Farming in the West Country.
I went to Boarding School at the age of 9 and right up to leaving Aldenham in 1939, the Railway was the natural means of travel. It was a sophisticated and efficient network throughout the whole UK. A ticket brought the day before returning to School at a cost of 1 penny a mile would be accompanied by a form for luggage in advance costing 2 shillings. This meant that a horse and cart from the station came the same day, collected the school trunk and tuck box and they were delivered by the same means from Radlett station to the shed beside the quadrangle so that on arrival at the start of term one’s first job was to lug the trunk up to the dormitory and the tuck box to the ‘chags’. The School Tuck Shop run by Mrs Timms (the grounds man’s wife) sold 12 Mars Bars for 2 shillings and 12 Milky Ways for 1 shilling. Unbelievable! Pocket money was £3 for a 13 week term.
My father accompanied me on my first day. He had received a posting to the RAF station Habbaniyah in Iraq so I did not see him for two and a half years. This was commonplace for the services or colonial etc services while a posting to India or Egypt was for five years. In the latter cases boys were allowed to leave school a week early in July and return a week late in order to visit their parents once per year by sea for the five years.
Because there was no bed available for three of us new boys, we slept for our first term in the gardener’s cottage in the care of Mr Winlaw who had a bed sitting room there. My companions were Peter Smart, an artistic and clever youngster from Glasgow, son of an astronomer and Gordon Mathew who became my bosom pal throughout our time at Aldenham. I have a clear memory of Mr Winlaw appearing in our room late one evening and telling us to put on our dressing gowns and come down to his room to hear
Edward VIII’s abdication speech on the wireless. As Winlow remarked, “This is a moment of history in your young lives”.
On the whole I enjoyed School life as a tiresome necessity and took part in all sport and athletics. I respected those who taught me who were dedicated men but treated Jock Evans and Fred English with some apprehension on account of horrendous stories of corporal punishment which older boys loved to trot out. All the Masters managed to make their lessons interesting although we never failed to make fun of them behind their backs particularly Mr Stott who taught Greek. He was so absent minded that we managed to tie his shoelaces to his desk leg while he was correcting papers in class.
The reservoir freezing over in 1938/39 resulted in skating instead of games for 2 or 3 weeks which was great fun: where all the skates came from, I can’t recall but appear they did.
I had a reasonable treble voice and sang the occasional solos in Chapel. It was probably 1937 when Colin Leighton the tireless Music Master, decided in the summer to put on in December HMS Pinafore. To my dismay he cast me as Josephine which meant every lunch hour and many evenings when I had to learn my part. Frank Duncan was Admiral Porter and my cousin Maurice Sharp was a perfect Cousin Hebe. Come the height of the rehearsals towards the end of November, the School went down with several cases of Measles and it was all postponed until the Spring. In the Christmas holidays my voice broke and a Diva from D’Oyly Carte Company had to be imported to do Josephine while yours truly was relegated to scrubbing decks in the chorus. What a comedown.
I never went out to Exeats except one May in 1938. My friend ‘Toady’ Mathew asked me out with his parents and sister who had come over from Bromley. It was a case of a meal, a run in the car and back to School in time for Sunday Evening Chapel. Next day Dr Wilson informed the matron that young
Miss Mathew had come down with Mumps; her brother had previously had the complaint; I had not, and I was banished for six weeks to the San. Mathew brought me work every day and we conversed through a window. It had its compensations because Mary Johnson, the nurse in charge of the San was young and beautiful and we were able to play tennis and squash while the School was at work. I can hear her now singing “How deep is the night” while she went about her work and I was stuck in my room with differential calculus. I had my come uppance, however, and my boasting of my pleasant enforced absence from classes came to haunt me when the results of School Certificate were published in August. When we returned in September, the Headmaster sent for me and explained in no uncertain terms that 4 credits in School Certificate were just not good enough and I would spend another year in VB. It was a terrible blow. Mathew went on to the Lower Sixth to study subjects for a career in medicine and became a House Prae while I languished in the Toyes for another year. I doubled the credits the following summer but had a price to pay for six weeks ‘bliss’ in the San.
To this day Split Infinitives grate. It is now so common in the media, the BBC and everywhere. Vivian Cox whom I admired so much for making English Literature such fun gave me a lengthy detention for using split infinitives in an essay that it has stuck with me ever since. Other things which ‘annoy’ me are the constant OK phrase in common use: “Basically, the bottom line is”; “the reality is”; even “the actuality is”.
And one last memory of which I am not so proud. Appointed to take charge of the Ten-bedder close to the adjoining Headmaster’s House was Phillips. He was two terms my senior, son of a Group Captain and nephew of a well known Admiral, Tom Phillips, who lost his life in 1941 when HMS Prince of Wales was destroyed so ignominiously by Japanese torpedo bombs off Malaysia. Phillips was passionate about getting into the RAF as a pilot and lived aeroplanes the whole time. He could talk of little else. In the corner of the dormitory were the clothes presses. Soon after lights out he would gather us round him at the presses and buckle on our ‘parachutes’. He would then take us out on the roof through the window for a ‘bombing raid’ over enemy territory. Sometimes the kitchen skylight was open and he would ‘parachute’ into the kitchen and raid the cook’s store cupboard. The resulting tins of baked beans and peaches were eagerly consumed back in the dormitory. The inevitable happened; we were out on the roof one night in high summer when a commotion broke out in the Yard below close the to the giant poplar tree. Flashing torches and the unmistakable voices of Webber and Kennedy calling on us to come down. I was behind the School clock and was back in bed when the House Tutors burst in. Only Phillips was caught – the rest of us were ‘fast asleep’ There now, I have got it off my conscience after all these years. Phillip’s father was asked not to send him back next term. Subsequently he entered Cranwell as a cadet and I think he must have been the youngest officer to be court-martialled for flying his trainer through a hangar! He went on to become a skilful bomber pilot in WWII and , sadly was lost in a raid over Germany. My particular friend ‘Toady’ Mathew never qualified as a
Doctor; he died flying with the Fleet Air Arm landing-on on his Carrier in a storm in the Mediterranean during the war.
Those of us who survived the war lost so many school friends and relatives but we have many happy memories of them and when the grandchildren say “what did you do in the war Granddad”, the answer is always “Nothing”. It’s easier that way.
I have very rarely been back to Aldenham. I have very many happy memories of the School and I am grateful for having known the men who taught me.