1943-1945

Introduction

Virtually all the letters that I wrote home during my time at Radley were saved by my mother. I have never looked at them before, but reading through them now I realise they give a vivid impression of what it was like to be at school sixty odd years ago, of the effects of the war on everybody’s life, especially the shortage of food and clothing.  I thought they were worth reproducing.  So I have copied them out, not in full, that would have been too long and repetitive and boring, but just those parts that I felt brought out what I was doing from week to week and gave insights into life at Radley in that period.  Reading between the lines, these excerpts also bring out a lot about the real Peter, the very shy uncertain and diffident boy growing up and blossoming out over the five years at Radley.  I have corrected the spelling (amazingly good I am proud to say) for the most part, leaving from time to time some of the peculiarities of my style and the more amusing spellings, and putting in words that were obviously omitted, as I never proof-read any of the letters, but essentially keeping the letters as they were written.  I have also omitted much of the references to the family life going on at the various homes we lived in over these years, references to Simon, our Jack Russell whom I dearly loved, to the hens, our other main livestock, and to the family’s comings and goings (I am amazed how much travelling them seem to have done during the war years).  Nor to the operation which my mother had in early 1945 – I don’t know what it was for, something to do with her legs I think.  It is clear I am a Mummy’s boy and the more personal parts of the letters are usually addressed to her.  My father was intensely involved in his wartime job and was a somewhat distant figure at that time, except for his fishing, though in the latter part of my time at Radley we grew closer.

In addition to the letters, I began keeping a diary at Radley.  It begins in March 1945 and covers in detail the last time I saw Michael and his death and funeral and continues until the end of 1945.  It is immensely detailed but provides a day to day account of exactly what I was doing.  I have not attempted to type it all out but have used it to expand the narrative and hopefully make it more interesting.  I did not keep the diary up in 1946 or the first part of 1947.  It begins again at the start of the summer term, April 24, 1947, which was the big ‘centenary’ term for Radley, which had been founded in 1847.  The diary stops abruptly on July 7th, a week before exams were due to begin.  I have also included parts of this in the narrative.

I have put the letters into a separate section of this book because there is so much material that they would have swamped the main narrative and made that difficult to follow.  Usually the narrative merely summarises the letters, so that the narrative can be read as a self-contained story without looking at the letters, and it also contains much material that is not in the letters.  However, my memory of events that far back is very patchy and probably inaccurate, so that the narrative is frequently bare of detail, probably mercifully so.

The First Terms

I finally knew I was going to Radley in March 1943.  I have a letter from Mr Cushing, the senior master of St Pirans, to my father dated March 6^th:

Dear Mr Naylor,

I am glad to tell you that news has come through to the effect that Peter has passed very well into Radley.

He did a good set of papers which is definitely the result of his continuous application to work.

It has been a pleasure to teach him, and I assure you that we shall miss him very much; he has always been so cheery and bright.

Our kindest regards to Mrs Naylor and yourself.

Very sincerely yours,

B. Montague Cushing

So, at the beginning of the summer term 1943 I went to Radley to start a very different life, going from being a moderately sized fish in a little pond, to a very small fish in a bewilderingly big pond.  My father used to tell the story about the time he had a discussion with Michael when he was going from St Pirans to be a new boy at Oundle.  He explained how, like the time he had first left home to go to St.Pirans, he went from being mother’s boy to being a dog’s body, but how gradually he became grew into being part of the school.  Well, my father told him, this was going to happen again when he went to public school; he would have to accept being a dog’s body once more, but it would not last long.  And it would happen again when he went to university, and when he started his first job.  At this point, my father says that Michael asked: ‘and will this happen all over again when I get married’!  I don’t remember having this particular lecture from my father.

So now it was time for me to become a dog’s body at Radley.  I had not expected that I would go to Radley.  I had always assumed that I would follow in Michael’s footsteps and go to Oundle.  (Dennis had gone to Dartmouth in I guess 1940 or 1941 as a prelude to a career in the Royal Navy).  I did not go Oundle because my father was not happy with the housemaster at Michael’s house and, because I would inevitably have had to go to the same house (Sandersons), St Pirans were asked where else I could go and picked Radley.

I knew absolutely nothing about Radley and precious little about public schools except, I suppose, what I had gleaned from Michael.  I don’t think I had read ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ by then.  I imagined them as just like a prep school but for the boys being older.  One major difference I soon found was the sheer scale of Radley.  St Pirans had about 60 boys, Radley near 340.  And the older boys weren’t just older, they were like gods!  Radley had been formed in 1847 by a group of high churchmen to raise boys in a strong Christian tradition.  Chapel was an integral part of college life, rather unlike St Pirans.  I just had to learn about the place as I went along.  At the time I went to Radley EastbourneCollege was also billeted on Radley, had been since 1940 and did not leave until the war ended.  They were known as the ‘bogos’, for reasons that were lost in obscurity.

I had to learn a whole new vocabulary that was peculiar just to Radley.  The headmaster was called the Warden , familiarly known as the Dun; his deputy was called the Sub-Warden.  The college was divided, not into houses, but Socials, seven of them, each with an initial as an abbreviation, A to G.  I was in Morgan’s Social with the initial G; the Social was named after the man in charge of the Social, who was called the Social Tutor.  The initial of the Social remained the same whatever the name of the Social Tutor.  I was fortunate in my Social Tutor, C. Y. Morgan, ‘Clem’ for short.  He was strict but fair and he became very much a father figure to me, and I guess to many in the Social.  He was also the Sub-Warden.  His wife was called Sheila, a delightful woman.  The other woman in our life was Miss Wheater, the Social Matron, inevitably called ‘the wheatear’.  The second man in charge of Morgans Social went under the wonderful name of Cedric Hammond-Chambers-Borgnis, Cedric for short.  He was also the succentor, the deputy head of music for the college.  Masters were Dons.  The School Prefects were called Pups.

To get to Radley for my first day at school, I caught the train from Bridgend to Paddington and there changed to what I thought must be the school special, Radley being also on the Great Western Railway.  (Shades of Harry Potter and platform 9 ¾).   It was I think just an ordinary GWR train that had the bad luck to be our choice that day.  I knew nobody in the seething mob of boys and it was all very bewildering.  There must have been a couple of hundred boys on this train.  I don’t know what the ordinary passengers thought of us.

I have no memory of the arrival or my early days.  My letters convey something of what I did but not of the pretty rough life we were to lead.  We were five new boys in Morgans that term, out of 34 for the whole school.  Apart from myself were Mark Carlisle, Walter Chambers (from Lancashire), Peter Johnson (from Chalfont St Giles), and Randal Kincaid (from Belfast).  We only ever addressed each other by our surnames, however well we knew the other.  Peter Johnson was to become my rival in class and we became great friends.  The senior boys all lived in studies, two or three to each.  The first year boys, about thirteen of us, lived in Social Hall, a large room where we each had a desk in which to keep our belongings and where we did our prep in the evenings.  There was little privacy.  No doors on the ‘bogs’, although there were on the cubicles where we slept in pairs.  And life was pretty spartan, wartime shortages affecting everything we did.  The strict clothing regulations of pre-war had to give way to clothes rationing and we had to make-do with whatever clothes we had (although first year boys still had to have their trouser pockets sewn up!).  I remember being mercifully ragged for a sports coat I had that was known as the sackcloth.  Hot water was confined to three days a week and in winter the buildings were frequently unheated.  Food was a constant preoccupation.  This is clear from my letters with their continual references to food and requests to my mother to send food parcels and make jam for me to bring back.  Many of the masters had left to join the forces and we had to make do with temporary replacements of varying quality.

Since St Pirans seem never to have heard of scholarships, and had never taught me Greek, I was not put in one of the classical forms for the scholars or bright boys.  I was in Shell 1 though I never discovered what this meant except that it was a lesser form of life.  I am sure this was a good thing in the long run as it meant I was usually top or second in class for most subjects and gained a confidence in my abilities that I would not have done if I had been struggling with those cleverer than me.

In his ‘History of Radley College’ Boyd describes the many changes that the war had brought about.  The greatest of these was in the boy’s appearance:  ‘Stiff collars and surplices went in 1940 with the shortage of starch, and gowns began to vanish as the supply dried up (I‘m sure I always wore a gown).  In 1941, owing to the rationing of clothes, uniform dress was abandoned, and by the following year all dress privileges ceased and any boy could wear any clothes he was lucky enough to secure’.  He then goes on (page 364) about how, through 1942 and succeeding years ‘must be imagined the general picture of boys living at an intensity new in school history.  Apart from book-work, regular games, and the daily routine of domestic duties, boys were doing P.T. five mornings a week, labouring on the estate, on Social vegetable plots (I remember Clem Morgan’s tennis court had been dug up to grow vegetables!), or (at times of special need) on neighbouring farms, putting in two weekly parades with the various corps and playing frequent School matches at home and away on all levels from 1st teams to Colts.  On top of this was the unprecedented cultural activity of School Societies and many educational journeys outside the gate The Radleian of the war years undoubtedly lived the whole day and did his bit.’  I was thrown into the middle of all this activity, assuming that it was just the norm for public schools, not realising how new it was to the Radley tradition.  Boyd continues, extolling the Junior Training Corps, saying that its record during the war and after ‘was something that may well be regarded with pride Physical fitness, initiative, and instructional ability were developed beyond all previous standards’.  The J.T.C. was an important activity of my weekly routine and one I did actually enjoy.  A thing I don’t remember, and which Boyd stresses, is the emphasis on making all in the corps into first-class shots.  I was already a good shot from St Pirans and this must have reinforced that skill.  The 1944 letters do in fact show that I shot frequently and was a good shot.

I had one important decision to make as soon as I got to Radley; whether to play cricket and be a ‘dry bob’ or to take up rowing and be a ‘wet bob’.  Radley had a long and important tradition of rowing and it was a major activity of the school, with very good facilities.  (Its greatest recent triumph had been to win the Ladies Plate at Henley  in 1938, beating Pembroke College Cambridge in the final.)  It was not a difficult decision to make.  At St Pirans I had not, to put it mildly, shone at cricket; my major role was as scorer for the 1st XI!.  I did not enjoy cricket either; it was too slow for my temperament which demanded something that was active and energetic.  So I opted to become a ‘wet bob’, a decision that would influence much of my life over the next ten years.  From the start I was encouraged to go out sculling and I spent many happy hours sculling up and down the river being as energetic or otherwise as I felt like.  The sculling boats were heavy clinker-built boats called ‘fennies’ with fixed seats, and were pretty stable.  I also learned to handle an oar and row in a IV.  The big event of the summer term was the ‘Social IVs’ with each Social fielding as many IVs as they could; I was in the 6th Morgan’s IV.  This inculcated a spirit of competition which I enjoyed.

Inevitably as a new boy I became the ‘fag’ of one of the senior boys in the social.  Mine was called Wallers, a rather dull character.  The chief duty I remember having to do is clean his shoes, old, cracked brown ones that would not take a shine!  Other duties included making toast on Sundays and running and fetching for him.  None of it very onerous.  One of the worst things about being a fag was that, when in Social Hall, if a senior boy wanted something, he would come into the corridor and yell ’fag’ and the last one to get there had to do what he wanted, regardless of whether he was assigned to that senior boy.

On the whole my first term at Radley was a happy one.  I had plenty to do, I was doing well at work even if it was not very taxing, I was enjoying ‘games’ and got on well enough with the other boys.  I do not remember any close friendships at this time.  The closest perhaps was Peter Johnson, whom I saw all the time in social and in class.  The other new boys have made little impression.  If anything it was a couple who had come the previous term with whom I did more things; George Birdwood and Peter Sturges, both exactly my age and with whom I seemed to have much in common.  The other person who featured much in my time at Radley was Robin Soames.  There had been three Soames brothers at St Pirans, almost exactly the same ages as the three Naylors.  I do not know what had happened to the two elder ones although I think the middle one went to Dartmouth at the same time as Dennis, but the youngest one, Robin, had come to Radley two terms earlier than me though he was much the same age as me.  We shared a cubicle that first term and maybe longer, I don’t remember, and later we shared a study.  We really had almost nothing in common.  He was tall and thin, with an excellent eye for a ball (played rackets for Radley, was in the 1st hockey XI at the age of 15 and took up real tennis while there) but with no interest in rowing and little in rugger.  His family had a hunting and shooting background and lived in Essex.  And yet we did much together then, although I have not kept up with him and never stayed at home with him, as I did with Birdwood and Sturges.

Chapel was a major part of school life, with at least one service every day and two on Sundays.  Woe betide anyone who was late.  Before Chapel we had to line up in ‘Covered Passage’, a very long corridor running up to ‘Hall’, adorned with notices of all sorts.  At one place there was a huge painting of Henley, and Radley winning the Ladies Plate in 1938, beating Pembroke College, Cambridge.  I liked to try and stand by this while we queued up waiting to go into Chapel.  One of my most vivid memories of early days in Chapel was with the creed.  We never used it at St Pirans.  I suppose we did not have prayer books at Radley and I had to pick up the words as we went along.  I managed well enough except for one word, ‘thence’, as in ‘from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead’.  I never could understand where Jesus was coming from!

My letters show how, like most small boys, I was counting the days till it was time to go home.  This was my second summer at Ogmore and I remember nothing particular about it, except the delight of living right on the beach in a virtually deserted seaside resort.  Having been swimming in the river Thames for the past six weeks or so the sea did not feel cold.  I didn’t realise at the time how lucky I was to be there rather than in a town.  If the war had not come and we had still been at Little Mount my life would have been very different; there would have been school friends to do things with, horses to ride, I would have learned to play golf.  Dennis and I had not made many friends other than the Corkery’s since we moved down to these parts as we were only there during the holidays and there were not many public school boys around.  We were neither of us very sociable!  But we kept each other company and we have both remembered these days at Ogmore with great nostalgia.

The family summer holiday as always, revolved around my father’s fishing.  The river Ogmore was not much of a place for fish, little water and very polluted, although I do remember long boring afternoons watching him fishing in it hoping to catch something.  This year he had managed to get some salmon and trout fishing on the Upper Wye.  We booked in at the ’Black Lion’ hotel in Llangurig, a small village just south of Llanidloes, very near the river Wye.  Dennis did not come for some reason, perhaps he had had to go back to the Royal Naval College.  Getting to the hotel was a major adventure, all by train of course, because of petrol rationing.  I remember it was just my mother and I who did the train journey.  I do not know how my father got there, maybe he did manage some petrol but I am sure we did not have a car the whole holiday.  We had to get a whole series of trains from Bridgend cross country to Llanidloes, the nearest station.  This meant, I think, going first to Cardiff, changing to a line that went north through the mining valleys to Merthyr Tydfil, changing again to get onto the Abergavenny-Brecon line at Talybont-on-Usk, an exciting ride that crossed the Brecon Beacons at the highest station in Wales at Torpantau and descended alongside the Talybont reservoir.  Another change at Talybont to get to Brecon, where yet another change took us north again into the Wye valley.  These are all lines that long ago were closed down.

My memories of that holiday are mostly of long afternoons walking along the little deserted roads flanking the river, picking blackberries and going up to small farmhouses to have cream teas, all in company with my mother, my father of course being on the river.  I have no recollection of what he caught but the holiday remains in my memory as an idyllic time.

I went back to school in the last week of September.  My letters give a good account of what day to day life was like.  I had moved up a form, now only 6 forms from the bottom of the school!  There was no rowing, in those days, in the winter term, which was devoted to rugger.  I had been pretty good at rugger at St Pirans and got my colours so I was longing to play again at Radley.  My letters show I did play a lot that term until I got ill and was in the Junior Colts.

The major event of the term was contracting jaundice in mid-November.  There were just two of us who caught it and we were put into isolation for about ten days.  I was pretty ill and the jaundice took a lot out of me and I did very little in the way of sports for the rest of the term.  Indeed it was a major set-back in terms of my health.  I never grew any taller after that and I have always put this down to the after effects of jaundice, though it may have been perfectly natural.  I have always wanted to be taller, like my two brothers.  Michael was 6 foot 4 inches.

My mother and father moved house during the term, from Sea Walls at Ogmore-on-Sea to Llancarreg at Southerndown, a distance of about two miles.  Llancarreg was a larger bungalow than Sea Walls with more garden where we could keep chickens.  To my mother’s fury they were not normal chickens that produced eggs but game fowl which produced hackles for fly-tying! (at least that is how I remember it, although from my letters we did keep lots of egg-laying chickens!).  The bungalow was situated on top of a 100 foot cliff above Southerndown Bay, a lovely sandy cove with great swimming.  The drawback, compared with Sea Walls, was the half mile walk down the steep hill to the sea.  But it was a wonderful place for a teenager to live.

I don’t remember much about the Christmas holidays.  I see from Michael’s letters that he got 16 days leave over Christmas from Cranwell where we was doing his RAF navigator’s training  and that he and Dennis both came together on December 22nd.  It must have been the last time all five of us were ever to be together again as a family.

The spring term of 1944 was uneventful as far as I can see from my letters.  I continued top or second in my form and played rugger in the first half of the term and rowed in the second half.  I was in the third Social IV and, from my letters, I appear surprised that I was in it week after week.  Michael went off to Canada to continue his training as an RAF navigator.  My mother sent me his letters so I kept abreast of his news.  Most of the letters were ‘aerograms’.  They were photographed in Canada and the negatives (presumably some kind of microfiche) were airmailed to England in bulk and then printed out this side of the Atlantic and mailed in the normal post.  He was obviously enjoying himself there and I was envious.  Dennis was in his last term at the Royal Naval College.  The College had moved from Dartmouth some years back and was at Eaton Hall near Chester.

I have no idea what I did in the Easter holidays.  Back at Radley for the summer term I was moving up in the world.  I was no longer in Social Hall with the other first year boys but had a study.  There is nothing in my letters to say who I shared it with, but I am pretty certain it was Peter Sturges.  His parents, or rather his mother as his father was off in the army, lived at Long Whittenham, right on the Thames, about an hour’s cycle ride from Radley, and we went there from time to time.  He had a pretty sister called Jane, a year or two younger than Peter.  I remained in the same form, doing very well as far as I can see, and started preparing for School Certificate that I was to take in the winter.  I was confirmed on June 9th by the Bishop of Oxford and my mother and father came for a long weekend and stayed at the ‘Crown and Thistle’ in Abingdon.  My letters are full of instructions about how to get to Radley by bus from Abingdon and the bus times.  Its amazing how restricted we all were at that stage of the war.  This was the first time they had been to Radley.  D-Day was June 6th and Dennis, having left the Royal Naval College at the end of the previous term aged 17, was in action for the first time on H.M.S. Ramillies, shelling the French coast.  I continued sculling and rowing, though not progressing beyond the third Social IV, and not doing very well in that.  My letters show me as a very happy boy there, concerned with our dog Simon, with how the hens were doing, very interested in food and getting enough to eat, and obviously suffering from a shortage of anything decent to wear.

The summer holidays were a bit lonely because for the first time I had no brother for company though I did see a fair amount of the Corkery’s, especially Catherine, because they lived just up the road from Llancarreg.  I also helped Mr Morgan with the harvest for probably a week or two, stooking the wheat and helping with threshing.  The old steam threshing machines were still in use.  Mr Morgan had a large arable farm just on the corner above Llancarreg where the road to St Brides went off.  We had all stayed there in the winter of 1940 before my father rented Wen Voe at Ogmore, so I knew them well.  They had two young daughters I couldn’t stand.  People from Cardiff and other towns started to come back to use the beaches, so I did not have Southerndown beach to myself any longer!

The family holiday was to Llangynidr, where we were to holiday not only every year, but at almost every other possible opportunity, until my father rented Cilwych House in 1953 and finally retired there soon after.  We stayed at The Red Lion, a comfortable hotel in the village.  It must have been late in September because I remember clearly that it was the time of the airborne landings at Arnhem, which were on September 17th; one of the guests had a relative who was involved.  My father rented fishing from a Mr Llewellyn, who lived in the last house on the left above the bridge.  I went down with him to collect the permit.  A very grand house it seemed to me.  I was not very interested in fishing and must have spent my time exploring the mountains, a practice I maintained for a good many years until I caught the fishing bug.  But that was not before we went to live at Cilwych, the house my father rented in 1953.  The main thing I remember about The Red Lion is a pianola in the lounge where I played Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony’ over and over again.  We also went to a fruit farm somewhere near and ordered a box of Worcester apples to be sent to me at school.  They were a great success when they arrived with all my friends and they were not rationed!

The winter term passed uneventfully and my letters indicate that I was happy and busy, working hard, usually top of my form and in Colts rugger side though I don’t think I actually ever played for the colts team.  At the end of term I took School Certificate, THE big exam of those days.  I thought I would do reasonably well, my main aim being to get 5 credits.  In the event I surprised everyone, including myself, with my results: 5 distinctions and 3 credits.  I got a self-addressed post-card from Clem Morgan in January: ‘Well done.  Distinctions: Hist, Geog, Fr, Maths and M (whatever that may be). Credits: Eng Lang, English and Latin.  A very good Certificate.’

I remember little about the Christmas holidays except that Michael was now back from training in Canada and had some leave while I was at home.  It was wonderful to see him again.  I looked up to him as my big elder brother and hero-worshipped him.  We were very alike I believe.  I also had his passion for aeroplanes and flying (perhaps inherited from my father and his experiences in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War).  I think my desire to become a pilot began when the chief pilot of Imperial Airways came to St Pirans to give us a talk.  That must been in 1938 or 1939.  By the time I went to Radley I could identify every aircraft in the sky and was reading everything I could about aeroplanes (Biggles!).

Passing School Certificate meant that I went up a form when I returned to Radley at the beginning of 1945, Modern Remove 2.  The stigma of not being in a ‘classical’ Remove still remained with me.  I don’t think I minded.  I knew I was not going to be a scientist so the Modern Remove suited me well enough.  When I saw my actual marks for the School Certificate I was disappointed they were not higher and decided the standard must be lower to have got distinctions with that kind of mark!  However, that made no difference as it was the grades not the marks that counted.  I changed my study companion from Peter Sturges to Robin Soames.  I have no idea why, and we got on well enough.  Robin was proving to be a top-class hockey player and got his 1st XI colours before the end of the term.

I graduated from rowing in the heavy IVs we used for the Social IV races into proper VIIIs, and these were college VIIIs not just Social ones (although I was in one of those as well).  There were four college VIIIs and I was in the bottom one, Colts, and was very pleased with myself.  By being in an VIII I was now also allowed to use the much lighter sculling boats, with sliding seats, reserved for the senior boys.  I took the opportunity to scull as often as I could.  In Radley jargon these sculling boats were called ‘Johnnies’.

I was very proud when I was awarded my second Social Rowing Vest and promptly went and bought three rowing vests!  I was also shooting for the social and we won the school cup.  Rowing stopped before the end of term so all the boys could concentrate on sports.  I was not much good at sports or running although I enjoyed the more energetic ones.  I could not complete the Obstacle race in the prescribed time!

Michael was now in the final stages of his R.A.F. training and had moved to Hampstead Norris aerodrome at the beginning of March.  This was about 17 miles from Abingdon and within bicycling distance.  He came over on March 17th, which happened to be the Saturday of the Trial VIIIs and I was racing in my Colts VIII.  He bicycled to Radley.  I comment in my diary ‘Oh! how lovely it was to see him’.  We bicycled together back into Abingdon where we had a large lunch at the Crown and Thistle, then I bicycled back to Radley to change and bicycled back to the river with him.  I wonder now that I had any energy for the boat.  He followed the race on his bicycle.  I comment again that it was lovely to be watched by him.  We unexpectedly won the race by half a length. I then had to get back to college, change, bicycle into Abingdon for an unsuccessful tea, and bicycle back again to college to be in time for chapel.  The last time I ever saw Michael was pumping up his bicycle tyre, which had a puncture, outside the café where we had ordered sausages and chips which were so slow in coming that we had to abandon them.

My diary takes up the story.  Monday March 26th.  ‘Tutor (Clem Morgan) called me into his study and said he had some bad news to tell me.  Michael had been killed in a flying accident the day before.  That was all he knew.  I just broke down.  I cried for about half an hour solidly.  I think I must have realised it all almost in that time for, after that night I haven’t cried much.  ‘Clem’ was very good.  Then just before supper I got off Chapel.  I went to the Wilson Library to look up trains to see if I could get home that night.  I saw it was possible if I arrived at some unearthly hour (about 3.30 as far as I remember).  I ate some supper then.  Came back and saw ‘Clem’.  He said I could ring up home if I wanted.  He suggested that I didn’t go home that night but I didn’t like the idea.

I went up to the Wheatear to use her phone and she was very nice about it and said I could use her phone.  I then tried to get on to ‘Enquiries’ but my line got crossed with some old fool of a lunatic, and after about ‘half-an-hour’ he understood what had happened.  I then got through.  I spoke to Pa, who sounded very steady, and he told me not to come.  I was ‘mightily’ thankful I didn’t.  I then went and sang the ‘Messiah’ at least part of it, it was the last thing I wanted to do, but there wasn’t anything else to do.  It went quite nicely and though I ‘sort of’ cried all the way through, it soon passed.  I then went over, as quickly as possible, to the Warden’s house where I was sleeping.  I got my things and was going along to wash in the bath room, when I met the Warden.  He was terribly nice, but I’m afraid I broke down in front of him.  I then went into the bathroom and had a really good cry, tried to say my prayers, they didn’t go too badly; and I went back to my room.  The ‘Dunn’ (the Warden as he was familiarly known) had put out 2 sleeping pills for me, one of which I took.  I must say I slept very well indeed’.

Tuesday March 27th.  ‘I woke up feeling very well and cheerful; indeed it was hard to be unhappy on such a day.  I had a good breakfast; I put a violet in my button-hole, it was one of the first of the year, and I wanted to show it to Ma, but it was dead by the time I got home.  The accident happened at a very convenient time for me, as I had no extra arrangements to make for going home.  I had an extremely good journey, and got back very punctually.  I went straight home by bus.  Ma and Pa were both there.  Mrs Morris, of the Post-Office had been very good, and when the post-office received the telegram, instead of sending it to ‘Llancarreg’ she sent it to Pa at his office’.

Anyhow, when I got home, we didn’t mention it for some hours.  There was rather a tense atmosphere about the whole thing.  Ma was marvellous about it.

Friday 30th     ‘We motored to Oxford, by way of Cardiff, Newport, Chepstow, Gloucester, then a few towns, to Eynesham, just outside Oxford. We didn’t have too bad a journey.  We were shown into a dingy old room at the ‘Evenlode’; still we were very lucky to get one at all.  Ma broke down again.  She had been doing so periodically over the last three days.  Uncle Dennis came along.  (An honorary Uncle! He had been my father’s best man and obviously a very old friend.  He lived with his second wife at Freeland, about two miles from Eynesham.)  It was the first time I remember meeting him, and at first sight he looked rather fierce, he was actually very kindly.  Pa had just decided to alter his plans and go back on Saturday afternoon.  Uncle Dennis persuaded him, very sensibly, not to do it.  We must all have been a bit fuzzled.  Then we decided that instead of my sleeping in his house and Ma and Pa sleeping at the Hotel; I would sleep at the Hotel and they would sleep at his house.  That evening, after Supper, Uncle D., having left us before Supper, we drove to his house, to which he instructed us; we had a chat there for about an hour; I remember I was most anxious to listen to the news, but I did not manage it; because I forgot all about it.  Pa drove me back to the hotel.  I didn’t sleep very well as I remember, for the last three days I had had a blocked nose.  Pa thought later that it must have been due to nerves’.

Saturday 31st  ‘I don’t remember what I felt like when I got up, but I know that Pa called for me in the yard about 10 o’clock.  We drove into Oxford and went straight to the station.  Pa got out and went to look for Uncle Lionel (his brother) and Auntie Marj (his sister).  I sat waiting in the car, watching some jeeps drive up to the station, and after about twenty minutes, they all walked up from behind.  Then we went to the flower shop to look at the wreaths.  There were some lovely flowers in the shop. After parking the car in the park, we looked around for where to get some coffee.  Then, after having had no success we went to the Clarendon.  At last we got some coffee.  I can’t remember when Uncle Dennis came but I know I met him in the hotel for the first time that morning.  I suppose, in fact I’m sure, that Pa walked down to the car park to meet him.  Then, when we had had coffee, and Uncle Lionel and Pa had had a stiff whiskey each, we drove to Botley (the Imperial War Graves Cemetery).  The cemetery looks incredibly tidy and very beautiful.  We waited around there.  Pa talked to two officers standing there, attending.  I think their names were Collins and Arnold.  One of them, I think Collins, had been all through the courses with him.  I remember looking at the hearse where I could see the end of the Coffin.  I know I didn’t cry.  The time was now twelve o’clock.  The padre had already rolled up as had the Coffin bearers.  We walked slowly up the drive with Pa and me leading.  I can’t imagine, what Ma can have felt like at this moment; they reached the small chapel.  It’s not a bad little place really.  There was a very short service.  I know that tears dripped from my face.  I just couldn’t help it.  One of the psalms we said was psalm 23.

Then the coffin was brought outside and lowered into the tomb.  I never realised that tombs were so deep.  The Padre said the last words.  I knew that that was the last time I should ever see anything a few inches away from Michael.  There was a lovely brass plate on the coffin.  It does seem rather stupid to put all that work into a coffin.  Still I suppose it is nice.  Then Pa talked to them all for a bit.  I know he was very annoyed with the bugler for making such a mess of the blowing, even to me it sounded awful.  Then Pa and I pulled out a tulip and dropped it onto the coffin.  Then we went.  We drove back to Oxford, and had lunch at the George.  We had a very satisfactory lunch.

Uncle Lionel left fairly early as he was meeting someone in Oxford; then after coffee we all left.  We went to the car park to wait for Ma to come.  At length she came.  Auntie Marjorie decided to walk to the station as the train didn’t go for some time, and so there was no hurry.  We all piled into Uncle Dennis’s car and drove to Hampstead Norris.  It was a good journey, and quite a party.  We met the C.O. and chief instructor there and talked with him over tea in the officer’s mess which was a good looking place and well kept.  They talked about the delay of a telegram, for about fifteen hours at Harwell; then about how Michael would have been killed instantaneously.  Daddy had a talk with the corporal who pulled him and Munday out of the burning plane; he said he was a very nice man.  We then drove back.  On the way out I had bought a .410 cleaning rod at Venables.  We went to Uncle Dennis’ house, and were left while they went to fetch the rabbit we were having for supper.  We ate a little.  We talked till Supper and then ate a very good Supper.  Then I helped wash up and went and sat down and had some of some of the best coffee I had ever drunk.  Mummy had had to go upstairs as she was feeling too upset.  She had been marvellous all day through.  An hour and a half about later I went upstairs to see her and said goodnight.  Pa then drove me back.  The woman at the hotel was very good to me and gave me some biscuits, two oranges and a glass of lemonade; I kept the oranges till the morning.  I didn’t have too bad a night.’

Sunday April 1st         ‘I got up nice and late.  I walked to meet Pa after breakfast.  I went quite a long way, on the way I passed an encampment where some gypsies had been having the night, and they had left two fires still burning, I had seen them pass towards Oxford during breakfast.  Pa picked me up; we drove back to the hotel, I collected everything, put them in the car; Pa paid the bill and we drove back to Uncle Dennis’ house.  After the usual good-bye we left and drove past Blenheim Palace, then via Woodstock, Chipping Norton, Moreton-in-the Marsh, Worcester and on to Droitwich, where we had lunch, at I think the ‘Black Lion’ with Granny, Auntie Marj, and Uncle Alec, as had  been arranged beforehand.

After lunch we drove back by Monmouth, passing the ’Axe and Cleaver’ to see if we could get tea, which we couldn’t as they were full up.  We went back, collected Simon, and went and had a very good Supper with the Morgans at the farm’

I have no idea what happened during the rest of the Easter holidays, except for one very nostalgic event.  Just before the crash Michael had been shopping in London with Cherry and had obviously been to HMV and bought records.  One day a large package arrived for him.  It contained a boxed set of Tchaikovsky’s sixth Symphony, the Pathetique.  I played it several times that holidays, and now whenever I hear it I am reminded of Michael.

My letters over this term are not very informative.  However, I did start a diary.  The diary for this term covers 70 pages, much of which is incredibly boring, but some of it contains interesting pictures of special days.  I do my best to condense it to something interesting.  A very special day was VE or Victory in Europe day, May 8th, to celebrate the German surrender and the end of the war in Europe.  My diary entry for the day ranges from the sentimental to the hilarious:

‘I didn’t get up till a bit later than usual.  There was breakfast then a short thanksgiving service.  We had a free hand from then till lunch at 1pm.  I bicycled into Oxford and was struck by the number of flags hung out.  There were hundreds and hundreds, literally, everywhere.  I went straight through Oxford and on to Botley, where I went and saw where Michael was.  The Cemetery was absolutely beautiful and looked lovely.  I was very glad I went there indeed.  I then went back into Oxford and rode around a bit looking at all the decorations.  They were tremendous and looked good.  I didn’t see any singing or revelry though.  I rode back to College arriving at about 12.30pm.  Then Lunch; I messed about till the P.M. spoke, I listened to his speech and thought it good.  Then I had to go down to the river and row; this went very well.  And so back to College, where I had an excellent supper.  I read till it was time for the King’s speech.  I was reading ‘The Warden’ by Anthony Trollope; I nearly finished it.  The King made a most excellent speech, and the news was very well put together, and the ‘Victory Report’ was marvellous.  It’s most amusing hearing Howard Marshall with ‘Ma Shall’ being here.  The Bonfire came next at 10.15 and a most excellent one it was.  There was much revelry and many loud explosions and plenty of singing.  And so the Mansion, being floodlit, came after this.  This was beautifully done and a part of the military band was playing on top of the Mansion.  I was seized with an attack of diarrhoea in the middle and had to rush indoors.  And so to a very frivolous bed.’

The diary always comments on the day’s weather but this is rarely of interest.  The second most frequent topic is rowing, as I was on the river, either rowing or sculling, almost every day except Sundays.  Probably the next most frequently mentioned topic is Physical Training and ‘Corps’.  We were forced to do P.T. at least five days a week and corps seems to have occurred every week day as well; as far as I remember they went together.  Work is mentioned intermittently, when something interesting happens, like being able to stay in bed if a class is cancelled.  Other topics, like who were my friends, how we spent our spare time, what it was actually like living in School, are disappointingly thinly covered.

Most of the comments on rowing concern how the various outings went.  These are of no interest now.  There are, however, occasional glimpses of interesting happenings.  Friday June 25th, for instance, I went sculling.  ‘Well, directly I started it really started to rain.  I’ve never got so wet in all my life, I don’t think, and it wasn’t possible to get any wetter.  There were about two inches of water in the boat by the time I got in, which was about ten to five.  I got as dry as possible, rushed up to college, went to shop quickly, had a hot bath and changed and I felt better’.  I can still remember that afternoon.  I had sculled downstream towards Abingdon and I decided to turn back as I was by Nuneham Courtney.  There is a bend in the river there and the woods fall steeply towards the water.  I came close into the bank and tried sheltering.  It was hopeless.  The rain was too heavy but there was no wind and very peaceful and I felt very happy.

On Saturday May 26th I went to the notice boards in Covered Passage and discovered I was not down to row in the (Colts) eight, and that Anderson had been put in my place.  ‘I heard that I hadn’t been rowing too well when we passed the first eight the last time we went out.  It just makes my blood boil, it’s so bloody stupid, I don’t know what to think.’  The next day, Sunday, I saw the rowing master ‘Joe’ Eason.  He said it was absolutely nothing to do with him.  ‘So I don’t know what it was for, my getting chucked.  I hope I’m back tomorrow.’  There is no mention of rowing on the Monday, but on Tuesday ’in the morning the Colts’ eight went up (on the notice boards) and I saw I wasn’t rowing in it; and, then, later in the morning, it was altered and I saw I was in it.  I was so pleased.  I can’t define my emotions; they were queer, they were not so great as I expected.  Anyhow the outing proved a complete failure, I was hopeless and no one else rowed at all well.  I do so hope I don’t get kicked out.  I am absolutely dreading it if I do.  I am praying I don’t.  By this time I was in a pretty rotten mood.’

The next few days there were sculling races, no outings in the eight.  I lost on the first day but was very pleased with my performance.  On Thursday there is a footnote that ends the story: ‘Anderson was put in my place as they were giving everybody a trial and I now see that it was perfectly fair, but I wish they would tell you when they did it.’

On June 26th all the four Radley eights rowed up past Oxford for races against St Edwards school.  This was an adventure.  ‘We biked down to the boathouse; then we embarked, plus blazers and sweaters, and started rowing up to ’Teddies’.  We went extremely well all the way, except for one or two patches.  We had a terribly long wait at Sandford Lock, 20 minutes to half an hour.  We got on a bus outside the Teddies boathouse, which is rather a cranky affair, and drove back to college.  I sat on the back seat, with five other people and we were very squashed.’

The next day we went back by bus to Teddies‘ boathouse.  ‘There we waited over half an hour hanging around, waiting for it to stop raining etc.  Then we rowed down to the start and waited quite a time for the other eights, which were an extra long time as our 2nd bust an oar (4).  Then the race.  The first minute wasn’t too good.  They started ½ length up (both sides of the course aren’t even) and they kept it up.  After the 1st minute we really got going absolutely marvellously.  We didn’t gain much, but we kept only about ¾ length behind.  Then going round the bend we were ¾ length in front and then to finish we ended up about 1 1/2 lengths in front.  Then we rowed back to the raft and had a very good tea and sit around till about 5.15.  We left at 5.20 and they were going to throw their cox in for bad coxing but they did not (worse luck!).  The row back was extremely good fun and went very well indeed.  We went through all 3 locks with the first eight.  We arrived back at about 6.45.  By that time I was quite nicely tired.  I biked back to college.  And then had a marvellous supper of pies, lettuce and tomato and new potatoes and followed by a sort of jelly-blancmange.  Then chapel.

The next evening the Captain of Boats, R.M.T.D.Lindlar, came and congratulated the Colts’ VIII on winning, ‘saying that we could wear rolled-down stockings and buttoned trousers.’  (I’m not sure what buttoned trousers were unless we had our flies sown up when we were juniors!).  On the following Tuesday, the next time on the river in fact, ‘I took my Colts’ eight privilege of rolled down stockings for the first time and it was nice and comfortable.’

After this experience of rowing for the college, rowing consisted of practicing for the Social IVs, back to heavy boats, and less fun after being in an VIII.  Then I was moved up to the 2nd IV and into a light boat.  Henley Regatta was on July 7th but boys were not allowed to go, to my great disappointment.  The Regatta had been suspended during the war years.  In 1945 a one-day event was organised.  There was a cup for schools which Radley won, beating Eton, our great rowing rivals, for the first time ever in 96 years of racing.  I remember the day well because we were in radio contact (using an army radio set that I would later get to know well) with another Radleian who was at Henley, from the top of the Mansion.  I was doing one of the chores we all had to do at that time, serving lunch in Hall, and I missed the first time radio contact was established and at the actual time of the race, 1.30, I had to be in Hall, where there were cherries and custard for lunch.  By the time I got back the news was through that Radley had won the semi-finals and in the best time of the day so far. ‘At 4.15 I went to the top of the Mansion and waited while Nutt tries to get through again.  He didn’t manage to get through for 25 minutes.  The race was due at 4.30.  Then after a terrific tension we heard that Radley has won, by 1 length.  A great cheer went up and everyone rushed around to spread the news.  It was a gorgeous feeling for the rest of the day.  Then, before Chapel most people came back from Henley and there were great stories going round the Social.  After Chapel I went down to the river and had an excellent bathe.  It was lovely and the water was very nice and warm.’

The Social IV was not very good .  On the first night we were bumped by Eason’s after twenty strokes.  ‘All that waiting and then only to be bumped so soon.’  On the second night we lasted two minutes before being bumped by Southams.  On the third night ‘we had Gardiner’s behind us in the races to-day and we had to row a whole course.  They never looked much like bumping us, but we had to row quite hard.’  On the last night Paton’s were in front, having been bumped up ahead the night before, and we thought we would bump them.  Unfortunately Sturges strap bust and he almost came over backwards.  ‘We managed to keep going and we were not bumped luckily by inches, but we never managed to bump Paton’s, which was most annoying.’

So much for rowing that summer.  The diary entries about P.T. and corps show that we were being put through a serious amount of training to get us into shape for going into the army.  By 1945, with the European war over, this was perhaps less urgent than in previous years, but we all faced a period of National Service as soon as we left school.  The list of things we were taught seems now perhaps very old-fashioned but then they were the core of army drill.  They include: appreciation of fire position, observation and orders; drilling in our P.T. clothes with a real rifle (‘very hard on the shoulder with only a shirt between the bone and the wood‘); we did ‘examine arms position for parade this morning instead of P.T.; we did about compasses, and bearings on maps.  It’s all quite easy really, in fact I knew most of it before’; ‘on corps this morning we went half-way up Chesars (Chestnut Avenue) and did Section Battle Drill.  I got covered in cow pat’; ‘on corps during P.T. we drilled each other and I had the most mouldy time and we went on for so devilishly long and I was most annoyed’; on corps we did about the duties of a Section Commander’; ‘on corps we did arms drill and it was all slightly boring’; ‘we did stripping and assembling and loading the Sten’; ‘on corps we did all about the Sten; all that we have done with Sergeant Major Fowler on parades before in the last week; but I didn’t mind.  It was nice and sunny and pleasant outside’.  And so it goes on and on.

A big event of the term was the Youth Parade in Abingdon on Sunday June 10th.  This was a big parade with all the other local youth organisations like the scouts so we had to be on out best behaviour.  ‘I cleaned up all my uniform in the morning.  In the afternoon directly after lunch we assembled and biked into Abingdon.  There we formed up and started marching.  This went well and I enjoyed it; it seems strange but I did.  Then we went into St Helen’s Church and had a service there.  This went very well indeed and I enjoyed it extremely.  Then we reformed and went on marching.  The marching began to get boring, after we had passed the saluting base; we went on and on interminably, we never seemed to stop.  But at length we stopped.  We fell out immediately and biked straight back.  I then had a very good tea of hot-buttered toast and treacle.  During the service the hymn singing, which was almost all we did, was quite good.  There were two different people saying the prayers; the first you could hardly hear and the second spoke in a tremendously loud voice’.

June 20th was practice day for the General Inspection two days later.  It was very hot.  ‘Apparently four people fainted and one was sick.  I saw the person being sick.  I don’t know why they all did it.  Then we went and did the completion of fire orders’.  ‘General Inspection: breakfast 7.45, Parade 8.45, (7.45 to 8.45 clean uniform!).  The Colonel (Inspector of Training Corps, Col. Chitty) came fairly quickly and inspected us.  He seemed very nice and went around asking questions.  He had a lovely big moustache!  Then we watched a very efficient demonstration of Platoon Battle Drill by the S.S. (no idea who they were).  We dispersed to our respective places.  We first did about the order of marching of a platoon and then a TEWT (Tactical Exercise Without Troops).  The Colonel didn’t so much as look at us.  We marched after this up Chesars (which would have taken us into Radley Park), and watched a practical demonstration of platoon battle drill.  It was quite good.  Lunch.  Then he gave us a speech and let us actually sit down.  Then the march past and dismiss.  So far so good.’  Then on Monday came the good news, a half-holiday on Friday because we did so well in the General Inspection.  I comment in the diary ‘All well and good.’  We were also let off parade that day after five minutes.  Marvellous!

The next event was the exam for Certificate ‘A’ Part II. on July 10th.  I had passed Part I last term.  Parade was at 9.15 and I spent the time before getting ready.  ‘I was in squad 4.  We first had some questions asked about consolidation and making a defensive position, next about map reading, then about rifle and fire orders, and then sten, and lastly drilling the squad.  After lunch we did one theoretical section attack on an enemy post.  I know that I passed.’

The next day was a special parade in preparation for the social platoon competition the following Monday.  ‘But as we weren’t much good we didn’t have to do any more and we aren’t going to be in it, which is a very nice thing.’

Towards the end of term I did what I had been planning for a long time, to transfer from the J.T.C., which was training one for the army, to the Air Training Corps, with training geared to the R.A.F.  I had to have a medical examination which I passed.  I nevertheless had to suffer my last parade in the J.T.C., the social platoon competition which I thought I had got out of.  After this I took my uniform back to the armoury for the last time.  I later got 10/- for my corps boots which came in useful.

References to classwork are mostly related to non-appearance of masters, muddles over timetables, being able to stay in bed longer if there was no early morning school (we had one class before breakfast) and other trivia.  There are one or two references to exams.  ‘We had early morning school again and it was awful getting up for it; in that period I learned that I had come top in the French project exam with 84/90.  Tiny  gave me a very nice prize of 10/-, which was very nice of him’.  Not everything was as good.  ‘The Rev R.C.Howard gave us back our history essays and told us all how rotten they were’.  ‘We had our French proses back this morning….I had done a pretty rotten one.’  ‘In early morning school we had a history exam, and I don’t think I did too badly’.  There is a very casual reference in mid-July ‘I seem to have started revising for the exams now, but I don’t seem to have done much work so far!  I suppose I shall do some later’.  A few days later I was revising German composition and story but the paper was pretty foul and I did not do very well, and I comment it can’t be helped.  But I did better in the German Dictation and Unseen!

I was also a very goodie goodie boy and hated to be in the wrong; I suspect a hangover from St Pirans.  Radley had a system of penalties, each with its own punishments, finally ending up in a beating by the head of social and eventually by the Senior Prefect.  For minor infringements one got a fault; five faults made a check, for which the punishment was an hour’s work at something unpleasant, or a run.  Five checks brought a beating.  I never got that far.  There is one very cross entry in the diary:  ‘I got a check in the morning from Acock because I snatched for cutlery at breakfast.  This is very stupid and a bad check.  The things are plonked on the table and if you don’t snatch you don’ get one at all’.

I read voraciously, serious books, novels, and lots of books about dog training.  This was, I believe, because Michael had got me interested by telling me about a book he was reading, ‘The Scientific Education of Dogs for the Gun’.  I spent far more than I could afford on dog books in Oxford, but I did read some of them too.  I still have them all.  Among the books I read that term were Henry Williamson’s ‘Salar the Salmon’ and ‘Tarka the Otter’, (the first time I read this I comment that I was rather bored with it, but this time I was really enjoying it.) ‘The Shadow of Dr Syn’ (later made into a film with Alastair Sim), ‘Gone with the Wind’, (my review of this is interesting: ‘It has an astounding end.  Ten pages before the finish you think everything is going to end beautifully, but afterwards it all fades out.  There are lots of things that could happen after this.  It would make another book.  Let’s hope she writes one, but it is a bit late now’.), ‘The Song of Bernadette’, ‘Looking for Trouble’ by Virginia Cowles (a foreign correspondent I think), ‘Shooting’ (a volume of the Lonsdale Library series), ‘The Experiences of an Irish R.M. (an omnibus version containing ‘Some Experiences of n Irish R.M.’, ‘Further Experiences of an Irish R.M.’ and ‘In Mr Knox’s Country’), ‘Best Sporting Stories’ and ‘The trial of Dr. Fu Manchu’ (‘trashy but exciting’).

About the only person to feature in the diary is Soames, with whom I shared a study, but even he is a pretty invisible figure.  I suppose this shows how little I was actually interested in people, and how few of those from Radley have remained friends.  There was almost no intermingling with boys from other socials.

There is reference to my giving our study an extra clean out as Soames’ parents were dropping in during the morning, and the next a comment that there were some lovely sweet peas in the study, a present from his parents.  A previous comment about the study is hilarious.  ‘This morning a cat came into the study and did ‘WEES’ on a cushion and the study has been smelling all day most vilely, as a little went on the floor’. Later on: ’Soames went out with his elder brother in the morning, who is home on leave.  He gave him a lovely pair of field glasses and a camera, which he brought home from Germany.  I was very jealous about the glasses!’.  ‘After lunch Soames started trying to teach me how to play Tennis and I didn’t get on too badly, but then it rained very violently and the court was too wet to play on, and so we went down to the squash courts and played there.’  It is extraordinary, when Radley has everything nowadays, to think that the only tennis court we had was a grass one in our social tutor‘s garden.  We did play croquet frequently, hardly an enticing sport for active young boys!  Towards the end of term I seem nearly to have arranged to visit Soames in the holidays and do some shooting but it never came off.  The only time I get at all worked up was the day I went with Soames to Sturges’ house.  ‘In the morning we didn’t do much except a bit of mowing.  Then after a very good cold lunch with plenty of cyder we went and started dredging the boat house.  We did this for about half an hour; for another nearly an hour we swam about with the punt and went up and down and had a very good time.  Then we took the dredger back and rushed up and had tea.  We then proceeded to think about going back.  We prepared.  It looked as though we were going to have an awful ride back with a terrific wind against us, but that dropped and it started to rain.  We came back fairly slowly.’

There are a surprising number of references to Chapel and sermons. ‘There was a very good sermon, on religion (in general) given by the Dean of Windsor.  He reminded me, when leaning on the pulpit, of someone I’ve seen in a film.  I can’ think who it is’.  ‘Chapel at 10.15.  It was an extremely good service.  It was the Jubilee of Chapel and the Bishop of Oxford and about 5 old wardens were there.  Also several other people.’  ‘There were ordinary matins in chapel this morning; I also went to communion, and it seemed to me very difficult to keep my mind on either service’.  ‘There was quite a good evensong this evening, though what the sermon was like I don’t know as I couldn’t hear it; it was by the Dean of Durham, the warden’s father-in-law’.  ‘I have just been to rather, but not too, boring service.  The Rev. C.F.B. Neate (the Eastbourne chaplain) was preaching.  I gave 2/6 in the collection as a token for Michael’s birthday’. On Michael’s birthday there is a sad entry: ‘This would have been Michael’s 21st birthday to-day.  I do so wish that he was in this world to enjoy it.  I know he would have had the time of his life’.

The end of the war meant that my father’s job in Bridgend was at an end and he could go back to his old job with ICI Paints in Slough.  This meant we would move back to Cookham Dean and our old house ‘Little Mount’.  There is a delighted entry for May 25th saying that a letter from my mother contained the best news that I had heard for a long time, that we were moving back to Little Mount in mid-July.  The entry for July 12th says I rang them up at Little Mount for the first time.  They had moved in the day before.

About three weeks before my parents came for the week-end.  The first thing we did, after going to have tea in Abingdon, at the Gargoyle Tea House, was to visit Michael’s grave at Botley.  My mother put some Sweet Williams and some roses on the grave.  Then we went to Uncle Dennis at Freeland where we all stayed.  ‘We sat around and drank iced cyder, which was gorgeous, till supper.  For supper we had  rabbit, cabbage and new potatoes (my first this year) and also blackcurrant pie.  The I had a plateful of strawberries and cream which was gorgeous, I had had only one strawberry this year on Ascension Day.  We sat outside till nearly 11pm and it was lovely.  Then we went inside and I had a last drink of cyder, and retired to bed.  I didn’t get to sleep for sometime and the room was terribly hot.’

Sunday 24 June:
‘Another very good day indeed.  It was hot all day….I got up about 9.30, had breakfast at 9.45.  I had All Bran, sausages and a fried egg, and toast.  Ma had ‘break’ in bed.  When she got up we both went for a walk down along the road and into a wood.  It was quite lovely and we had a lovely long chat, all about moving and lots of other things.  We didn’t do much till lunch.  We had a gorgeous lunch, a sausage meat pie, with lettuce, cold pots and tomatoes, followed by a gorgeous strawberry ice, which was too good to describe.  After lunch we lay in the garden and chatted and read.  Ma had a snooze.  When Ma woke we went for another short walk. We saw some horrid Labour election notices about ‘Elect your servants and not your masters’, and another was ‘Overheard in a fish queue ‘we don’t want them red herrings’’

‘Had quite a bit of cyder before supper.  For supper I had roast lamb, new potatoes, green peas, mint sauce and gravy followed by strawberries and cream. Gorgeous.  I packed everything up and after a short while we left.  It was quite a pleasant drive.  I arrived just before half-past.  I had 2 cakes, 2 lbs of jam and some biscuits and 2 tartlets.  I had a fairly good night.’

I had been corresponding with Dennis all term but it was all done by Forces Mail and I had no real idea where he was, although from various hints he dropped I guessed it was in the Mediterranean.  Only when the war in Europe was ended did we learn the truth.  He was on a mini aircraft carrier, H.M.S. Collossus and had been to Gibralter, Malta, Alexandria, Suez, Aden and had crossed the equator.  He went on to Ceylon later to Trincomalee, ready to join in the war against Japan, which fortunately proved unnecessary.

Monday 30th July:
HOME.  ‘The thought of going back to Little Mount almost made me crazy, not having been there for five or so years.  I had breakfast at 6.30 amidst the usual end of term convivialities.  I started bicycling at 7.15.  We had quite a good journey, I biked most of the way with Waterer, and made good going and I arrived back at 10.30.  We ran into Scotch Mists, once or twice on the way back but nothing terrible.

Then home.  It was lovely to see the house once more.  It had altered its appearance to me, but it is me that has altered I know.  I looked around all morning.  Chatted to Mr and Mrs Tomlin, she seems slightly older (not surprisingly).  I raked up in the loft looking at all our things.  It was gorgeous.  After lunch I went to Marlow, and had a haircut and shampoo, at Mr Hodges, and looked around the town.  I then went and had tea with Granny and saw Auntie Marj and Uncle Alec.’

The diary records a busy time.  I went up to London frequently with my mother, went shopping in Harrods and Hamleys and various other places like Fortnum and Mason.  We lunched at Harrods and Fortnums, Marshall and Snelgrove and the Hyde Park Hotel Grill, we went to the cinema and tried to go to Madame Tussauds but it was always too full, we visited my mother’s sister Kay who was living at No.2 Ladbrooke Terrace.  I was revelling in the joy of being free to wander round London.  We seemed to eat out a lot, at the Olde Bell in Hurley about once a week, at the Compleat Angler in Marlow quite frequently, and the White Hart in Cookham more than once.  I was busy sorting out my possessions that I had had to leave behind at the start of the war.  I gardened.  I tried shooting a bow and arrow but lost the arrow!  I went out on the river in a punt, on my own, and with my mother, and one day my father rented a motor launch and we went up to Hurley.  I took up riding again and seem to have ridden frequently.  I started bird-watching and made a bird table and tried to make a hide which was not a success.  I went everywhere by bicycle and explored our old haunts.  I read novel after novel.

The most adventurous bicycle trip was to a party at the Birdwood’s house in Rickmansworth.  George was just senior to me in Morgans but we were friends.  I was to go with Peter Sturges on Cookham Bridge and we would go on together to Amersham.  He had already come 2 1/2 hours from Long Wittenham, he was suffering from the ride and kept on getting cramp.  But we were only ½ hour late in Amersham and had lunch with George Birdwood.  We went on to his house at Heronsgate, near Rickmansworth.  It was a party of 13 friends and sounds dull, just games.  We spent the night and bicycled back the next day.

The war in Japan was over on August 15th, VJ Day.  My father got two days holiday and went fishing on the Thames at Cookham.  I went with him.  We caught lots of fish, averaging about 1 oz or less.

For our summer holiday we went to the Caernavon Arms in Dulverton, sending bicycles in advance by train.  The choice was mostly influenced by my father’s fishing.  We drove down there, having lunch at the Bear in Hungerford, tea at the Lion in Wiveliscombe, reaching Dulverton at 5.45, seven hours later leaving Cookham Dean.  It does not sound a very exciting holiday from my account in the diary.  The weather was poor.  My father fished and I walked or bicycled on my own or read.  We went to some of the local towns and shopped.  We went to a meet of the local hunt but arrived just after they had moved off.  I did go riding once.  On the way back the car broke down (gasket problem) in Newbury and we had to get a taxi home.

I went back to school at the end of September.  I was going to take Higher Certificate in the summer of 1946 and I learned that my subjects would be French and English as the main subjects, with German and History as the subsidiary ones.  The diary is very much a repetition of the last terms; PT, Corps, (but the Air Training Corps this term, where I was learning the morse code, which I had in fact taught myself the year before, astro-navigation and star identification), standards, (these were the athletic tests we had to pass, I was not very good and found them difficult and failed the discus, high jump, the knees up and 100 yards; but I only needed five and got these), sports, early morning runs, reading more books.  The reading is more serious since I needed to get to grips with the English syllabus for Higher Certificate; books like Henry Fielding‘s ‘Tom Jones‘, George Eliot’s ’Middlemarch’ and Ruskin‘s selected works.  There was a change in school policy about this time to give the boys more independence in learning and we had ‘reading periods’ in our own studies.  This helped me read even more.  I was also reading the usual flow of other novels etc. I joined the Junior Shakespeare Society which met once a week and read Shakespeare’s plays.  Life was becoming more intellectual.

One amusing entry describes having my hair cut and the barber talking to one of the boys about how he used to cut John Masefield’s hair; he was the Poet Laureate.  He would only have cold water poured over it when it was being cut, whatever the weather.  He also used to cut the hair of John Bridges, the Poet Laureate before Masefield.  He had along beard and wore a sombrero, which he put on by throwing it up in the air, catching it on his head and shaking his head from side to side to adjust it, never using his hands to put it straight.

In the middle of October Dennis sent a cable to Little Mount from probably Australia simply saying :  ‘On my way home, love Dennis’.  This caused great jubilation.  A week later we heard he was coming home on the ‘Suffolk’ and would be in the channel on November 13th.

We did not start rugger till mid-October. I was now playing in the front row of the scrum, sometimes hooker.  We were not very good.  An entry for October 24th reads: ‘Had a match in the 4th XV against Teddies (St Edwards).  They won 38-3 which is quite a usual score v Teddies.  I was left front row and quite enjoyed it, but the wind made it a bit funny’.  By November I was playing in the 3rd XV.

At this time I became a stage-hand, assisting in the construction of scenery for school plays, raising and lowering scenery during plays, and assisting with the lighting.  Acting had a very strong tradition at Radley and this made me part of it, without actually having to act.  This was an important move for me at Radley as it both brought me into close contact with boys from other socials (amazingly enough this was quite unusual at that time) as well as making me part of a very close-knit group (the stage-hands) outside my otherwise rather ‘hearty’ sporting activities.  I know I thoroughly enjoyed it, particularly the actual plays themselves, when we would end up afterwards having late-night parties and going to bed after everybody else!

At the end of October I had a proper medical for the A.T.C. and was passed with normal eyesight and no colour blindness.  The A.T.C. also began to provide some interesting visits.  ‘On Field-day we bicycled to Culham Aerodrome, (Royal Naval Air Service) and looked over it.  We looked over the engineering and carpentering shops, which are full of marvellous tools and the armament shop in which were 20mm cannons for Firefly and Seafire and Browning machine guns.  Then looked over a Firefly and saw the ‘Ash-Bomb’ (Part of Radar equipment) and other bits.  Had a look at Seafires, which are certainly a lovely piece of work.  Looked at Firefly cockpit.

Hoped to have a flight but the Met. Officer said it was going to cloud over and rain, which it proceeded not to do.  We were dismissed and rode back to college.’

However my first flight was not long delayed.  On November 6th, after an early lunch, and getting leave off games a group of us bicycled to Abingdon Aerodrome.  ‘We went to the Flying Control room and waited for ¾ hour before we went to the Parachute Room and got chutes and went to the Anson.  We took off at about 2.10, circled over college, across to Thame and Luton, turned N. to Kettering, and S.W. to Northampton and Oxford, but we were late.  It was a lovely feeling taking off, for the 1st time.  Once in the air seeing everything so small, we flew at about 150 mph, height 1800.  Landed at 4.20, in the air saw a Liberator, a Martinet, several Wellingtons.  Oxford looked lovely from the air.  All the towns looked lovely from the air, and not nearly so straggling as they look on the ground.  I didn’t feel at all sick, as we had a very comfortable journey; it is a lovely feeling banking.’

A little later there was a whole day visit to the Farnborough Air Show.  We went by train to Didcot, changed for Reading and spent time there looking round the town and having coffee.  Another train to Farnborough and then a bus to the R.A.E.  ‘The First thing to do was to get a programme.  Then I glanced at the German planes on exhibition.  Most of the time I looked round with Twist and Le Blanc Smith.  Then we wandered over to the other side of the drome, and looked at a Firefly, Sea Otter, and across main runway to an old Hampden, and a bit of burnt Boston, a wreck of an Airacobra, a Horsa and a Hotspur.  Then we were told we should not be there, as the C.O. was having fun and games in a Helicopter and another man in a Fiesler Storch.  They are marvellous planes and to see the Heli. hovering and landing is incredible.  We wandered back and looked round ‘A’ hangar where there were B.V.155,  F.W. 190, A.3, He 162, Ju 88, which were all propped up so that its wheels could retract., Me 163b, a wizard little jet, Me 109, a Horken IV, a marvellous tailless glider, a lovely ‘Olympia’ glider, a submarine-towed  Syncro kite, which looks as though it would fall to bits, numerous guided flying bombs, one which was guided by wires from the parent plane, an air-to-air bomb, 2 V.1s on launching ramps, 1 V.2 in bits, and bits of them, propellor units, A/S rescue equipment like dinghies, controls and bits of planes all on show, then there were all the latest Jet-Turbine units all beautifully polished, including the 1st original jet in the Gloster’s first jet-plane, also all the famous engines, Sabre, Hercules, Griffon, Gypsy, Merlin etc., then we got our lunch and started looking at the forbidden part, we didn’t know it was forbidden until an R.A.F.P. came along and  told us we shouldn’t be there and that Flying Control would be v. annoyed if he found us there.  We actually saw there, a Storch, Aldon, Buckingham, Lockheed 14, Wellington, Mosquito.  Then we went and had a look at the rest of the other part of the exhibition, of equipment, rations, flying suits, cameras, armaments, the seaplane tank, where we saw a Sunderland on the water but no more; we had a look round the wind-tunnel and went underneath it, and saw some huge dynamos.  While we were there a Me 262 was flying around, and landed before we got back.  Then we came back and watched the Helicopter, and Storch, fooling around, a Wildcat take off, and land, 4 times, a Halifax takes off, a Me 262 takes off and lands, also an Oxford, a Domine take off and also a Hudson, and a Fortress land.  It was gorgeous seeing all these things land, and the cloud of dust into which the tyres disintegrated.  It was marvellous that we heard it announced that the world’s air-speed record had been broken by a Meteor at a speed of 606.  I looked over the German aircraft exhibited.  The planes I saw during the day were…..’ then follows a list of 77 aircraft!

My mother and father came for the week-end on November 10th.  My father went in to meet Clem Morgan to ask if I could miss chapel that evening but was refused.  They were staying at the Mitre in Oxford, where we had lunch.  After that we visited Michael’s grave at Botley.  The shopping and I had to be brought back for Chapel.  We returned to the Mitre and had supper of duck, ice cream and lots to drink.  Chambers’s parent were staying there too and gave me a lift back.  My father said he had sold the car that had been his pride and joy before the war, a Buick.  It had been in storage throughout the war.  He got £515 for it compared with the £90 he had paid for it in 1937.

The next day, November 11th we all went to an armistice Sung Eucharist.  There was the last post before the 2 minutes silence, followed by the reveille.  We all then went to have a meeting with Clem and talk about my future.  It was decided I would go to Pembroke College, Cambridge, and then into the civil service or something.  (I don’t think there was ever any question that I would have to compete to get into Cambridge; it was just assumed that that was what would happen.  My father had been at Pembroke for one year 1913, before joining up, and Michael had been there in 1942 on a short course.  It was a family connection which still counted then I suppose).  We went back to the Mitre for lunch and then tea at Dennis Hall’s, we all had supper at the Mitre and then I got a lift again with the Chambers’.

The next day I had a talk with the careers master, Ivor Gilliat, about my future.  It was decided that I would start Spanish next term.

It is interesting to see that I spent most of the following Sunday working, a big change from earlier times at school.  I was doing my ‘project’, making a precis of Voltaire’s ‘Lettres Philosophiques’, which I found rather boring.  There are now continual references in the diary about the work that I was doing, essays, projects and books.  And references to societies, the junior Shakespeare Society and the Gramophone Society among others.

I was allowed to go home for the weekend of December 1-2 in order to see Dennis a he was now back from the Far East, indeed back from the war for good.  There was a scare that I might not be able to go.  On the Thursday before I was feeling ill and went to the doctor, partly because I had had a bad kick in the back playing rugger and partly because there was gastric flu going round.  He put me off-games and told me to come again on Monday.  Rumours began going round the school that about 30 people who had gone down ill had got dysentery, not gastric flu as had been thought at first.  This was confirmed by the Warden at supper, who told us that the medical authorities said we must wash our hands every time before eating and after going to the W.C.  The next day I went to the infirmary to see if I had dysentery and had a swab taken.  I was told to come back the next morning.  This meant I missed my train home but the swab was all right, though I was to be off-games for two more days, and my mother and Dennis came in the car to collect me.  Dennis drove and he touched one man on his bicycle but he did not fall off.  Dennis got out and apologised.  Its funny but I remember this incident clearly and exactly where it happened.

It was Dennis’s birthday.  We had fish pie for lunch.  My father had just bought some English game hens (for their hackles of course) but three of them escaped and after a great hunt across the common, we caught two.  The other stayed out all night in someone’s greenhouse and was brought back the next day.  Granny, Aunt Marj and Uncle Alec came for tea, and Mrs Tomlin produced a cake.  We had a marvellous supper of chicken and champagne and then went down to the Gummers and played vingt-et-un till very late.

By the end of the next week I am complaining that my hands are quite sore now as we have to do so much washing because of the dysentery, and that I have a cold, but not very terrible.

I seem to have moved up to the Senior Social Rugger team as my diary records that there was a senior Social match against Hope’s which I thought we would lose.  It was 8-0 to them at half time but we won 9-8.  I was in the front row.  The following week there was a match against Southam’s in which we were expecting to be absolutely beaten hollow.  They won 14-0 after a 0-0 at half time.

During these weeks of the end of term the diary records much about exams.  I seem to have done well.  On the 12th of December there was the first exam, A French Prose.  It wasn’t too bad.  On the 13th English Main, an exam on Tennyson, in which I was 3rd with 72 ex 100; English subsid, an exam on Macbeth;. 3rd with 74.  The next day was French Translation and European history, in which I was top with 51%.  On the 15th were French Literature and German Translation.  I was top in the French Literature with 70%, got only 42% in the German Translation and was 10th in the combine French Prose and Translation.

I went home on December 18th, by train to Reading where Dennis met me in the car.  Dennis has just got a new motor bike which I admired, a 250 BSA.  We went to the cinema in the evening to see James Cagney in ‘Blood on the Sun’.  The next day he had a pillion seat put on the motor bike and I was allowed on it.  We went to the golf club where he had a lesson and I watched.  The next day we went there again on the motor bike and I had my first golf lesson.  We had tea in Marlow with Aunt Marj and Uncle Alec.  It was dark when we started back and a pitch fog and we crawled slowly home.

The next day Dennis and I went to London and had a marvellous lunch at Monseigneur’s and in the evening we went to the theatre with my father to see Vic. Oliver at the Coliseum in the ‘Night and the Music’ followed by dinner at his club the Gargoyle, which we did not have time to finish or we would have missed the 11pm train.  I comment that I have never seen such a scrum in London, especially at the stations.  We got home at 12.20 and I went straight to bed.

The diary for Christmas day is interesting.  I remember nothing about it, indeed I remember nothing about many of the diary entries, its as if I was reading about somebody else.  ‘Went to communion with Pa, new priest, nice.  Then breakfast and presents.  Penknife from Auntie Dody (my godmother, my mother’s sister in law), 10/- Uncle Norman (Norman Maitland, my godfather), £1 Grannie, 7/6 book token, from Anne and Tina Coastally (daughters of a colleague of my fathers), £3 from Ma and pa, lovely wallet from Dennis,  from Sydney, N.S.W., ‘Beyond the Chindwin’ from Auntie Marjorie and Uncle Alec.

Grannie  here all day, and it was very nice having her.  Went down to the Gummer’s and had a pint of Champagne cider and came back and had a glass of champagne.  Marvellous dinner, gorgeous turkey and Christmas pudding, walnuts and muscatel raisins, bit drunk!!’

The entries for the rest of the year show a very typical life, of walks, bicycle rides, cocktail parties, dances, reading books, clipping the hens wings, wearing evening dress for the first time (‘very uncomfortable when sitting’), trailing round the golf course with my father and Dennis.  The final entry is about a dance and getting to bed at 2am after seeing the New Year in, in style.