Clifton andThe Great War

Dr R.J. Acheson

Painting: WHT Titcombe, The Soldiers’ Communion

1

The Calm Before the Storm

It is all too easy to read history backwards. For those at Clifton

and other Public Schools just before the outbreak of the First

World War there were few clouds on the horizon.

True, Lord Roberts, when inspecting

the combined Offi cer Training Corps of

Clifton, Cheltenham and Marlborough at

Beggar’s Bush in 1912 had hinted that

there were diffi cult times ahead and

commented that the young men in front

of him had made

and one boy who was there later wrote

that he remembered Lord Roberts

a good start in preparing yourselves to defend your country if your services should be required

warning us of the need to be ready for a great war which he could see coming. But no one took him seriously. Like those other exhortations from the chapel pulpit to prepare ourselves for “the battle of life”, they seemed empty words, and anyway there was nothing we could do about it.

But, on the whole, Clifton pupils

continued to bathe in the warm after-

glow of the 1912 Jubilee celebrations,

secure in their own little world

and enjoying the sunshine and the

apparently changeless horizon which

stretched out before them in that last

Edwardian summer before events were

to shatter that world for ever. Anthony

Eden later recalled that

all seemed gaiety, sunshine and good food

one perfect summer idyll that I ever experienced, the lovely legacy of a vanished world.

whilst Vera Brittain, looking back

on her brother’s fi nal Speech Day at

Uppingham, wrote of that

2

as part of Lord Haldane’s post-Boer

War reforms and which Douglas Haig

was to later acknowledge as having

played a vital part in stemming the

German invasion of France in 1914.

Following on from this, the College

had been presented with a trophy,

called The Canada Trophy, which was

to be competed for on an Inter-House

basis involving military skills such as

Drill, Musketry, Lashing and Knotting,

Bridging and so on. Such renewed

emphasis on matters military did not go

down well in some pupil quarters:

A contemporary Cliftonian, looking back

after the war, described the Commem

weekend as follows:

The occasion was one of brilliant sunshine, marquees, fl ags and free strawberries and cream. Even the parents were to be admired, as they fl uttered their parasols and puffed their cigars.

Industrial unrest, the Arms Race with

Germany leading to the triumph of

jingoism over patriotism, Irish Home

Rule and an increasingly strident

Suffragette movement – all of which

were beginning to shake the hitherto

granite confi dence of English society,

made little impact on the inhabitants of

the buildings in College Road. Council

was grappling with the issue as to

whether or not a Chaplain should be

appointed, the Head Master’s proposal

to lengthen the Easter holidays by one

week on health grounds, and arguments

with the residents of Pembroke Vale

about fencing and with the Zoo about

their attempts to get an annual licence

for a musical steam organ.

The School had other things on its

mind. Contributions to The Cliftonian

included moans about “living in a

constant hurry”, the state of the Chapel

Quad, the dilapidated condition of

the cricket pavilion and the weather.

There are signs, also, that the gloss

was beginning to wear a bit thin after

the 1912 celebrations, the magazine

reporting that support at the Penpole

Runs was falling off, the Chess Club

had collapsed through lack of interest,

Debating was poorly attended, and the

School appeared to be losing interest in

its involvement in the St Agnes Mission

down in St Paul’s. Geoffrey Tregelles (NT

1904-1911), who was killed in action in

1916, wrote rather sternly to the School:

The School has in this matter a responsibility which has been unmistakeably shirked….it is to be earnestly hoped that next year we shall fi nd willing volunteers for work which is useful, interesting and our bounden duty.

Counter-balancing this apparent

malaise, however, was the growing

dominance of the Offi cer Training Corps

or OTC as it was called, which had

been established across the country

The Corps was made for the School, not the School for the Corps, nor was the School ever meant to be barracks, with people going about with their hair cut like Tommy Atkins.

As the Summer Term of 1914

meandered peacefully to a close, the

School braced itself for the fi rst cricket

match against Tonbridge at Lord’s and,

in common with many Public Schools

of the time, the annual Corps Camp at

Aldershot. Commem had passed off

“fi ne and sunny” with the Head Master

noting that ten leavers were bound for

Oxford and Cambridge adding to the

large number of Cliftonians already

in residence at these two universities,

many of whom were amongst the fi rst

to volunteer when war broke out. As

Subalterns, they were to be the fi rst

casualties of the war – a fact which

rather challenges the Blackadder view

of these young men as being “nice but

dim” products of a privileged elite.

Lord Haldane

3

Huntly Gordon (WaH 1911-1916),

returning to Clifton after an idyllic

summer in Scotland, noted that

As the Tonbridge Match began (seven of

the Clifton XI were to be killed over the

next four years), Austria declared war

on Serbia prompting Russia to follow

suit. By the end of the week, Germany

had declared war on Russia and, on

the Sunday, on France. Against this

background of mounting tension, the

OTC camp carried on:

Camp was torn with many rumours, which were suddenly ended on Monday morning at reveille by orders to strike camp at once and entrain by 11 o’ clock. This we managed to do, and the next day war was declared. Owing to this sudden break-up we were deprived of all fi eld-days and night-work.

When the boys returned to Clifton in

September, it was to a very different

world. The fi rst hint of any impact on

the School was a Minute in the Council

Meetings Book concerning

Fee remissions:

It was decided to charge only a reasonable proportion of the Tuition Fee in the case of boys who may leave during the course of the term for Woolwich and Sandhurst or to take commissions in the Army

and this was followed by an agreement

to continue to pay a portion of Sergeant

Sheppard’s wages whilst he was on

secondment to the Army as a Physical

Training Instructor.

Understandably, the tone in Clifton as a

whole was markedly solemn in contrast

to the year that had gone before, the

Editor of The Cliftonian attempting to

capture this in his Editorial:

It is not without misgivings that we take up our pen to write these few paragraphs. So much has happened in the last two months that the gulf between last Term and this cannot be bridged by any words of ours. Events of such momentous importance are taking place even as we are writing, that it seems almost impossible to give our attention to more trivial matters…..

……The routine of the Term has quite naturally undergone considerable alteration, and military training is the most prominent feature. All School football matches, with the exception of the Wellington and Marlborough matches, have been cancelled.

Back at Clifton, all was bustle and change. With Kitchener of Khartoum at the War Offi ce and Winston Churchill at the Admiralty no one expected the war to last beyond Christmas.

The Cadet Corps took precedence over games, a minor revolution in itself. A number of elderly masters did their bit by joining the Corps…..To see men, so formidable in their rightful place, openly step down and assume the role of humblest recruit was so disarming that none of us had the heart to take advantage of it.

He recalled that much of his time

was taken up with cleaning boots and

buttons, and route marches twice a

week as well as on Sunday afternoons,

often as much as twelve miles at a time:

4

1914

The fi rst Cliftonian casualties were, understandably,

amongst those who were already serving in the Regular

Army and thus in the BEF as it attempted to prevent the

German Army from invading France, or overseas, for example,

in Africa.

The Cliftonian published their names,

twelve killed and eighteen wounded. It

was to be the fi rst of many such lists.

In November, the Head Master, Dr

King, informed Council that six masters

had joined up and that he intended to

cover their lessons with temporary

appointments. This was a problem for

all HMC Headmasters at this time. In

their recent book, Public Schools and The

Great War, Anthony Seldon and David

Walsh make the point that boys

were not impressed by the replacements….Boys at Winchester were delighted by a temporary teacher who had been a Belgian High Court judge; when giving private tuition in his house, he would offer cigarettes to his students.

5

The National Anthem was introduced

into Chapel Services as an almost

refl ex reaction to the call to arms

and the Debating Society whirled into

action once more to debate the motion

“That in the opinion of this House

the personal ambition of the German

Emperor is the chief cause of the War.”

Understandably, it would have taken

an inspired opposition speaker to

defeat that proposal. One pupil who did

speak against the motion, somewhat

courageously under the circumstances,

was Rolf Tapken (WiH 1911-1915),

a German student at the College.

He had, in fact, been the subject of

correspondence between Council and

the Home Offi ce, a Council Minute of 16

December recording

Gradually, Clifton geared up for the

war. The Close was used for drilling

by troops billeted in Bristol and the

School Range was lent to local troops

for shooting practice. “All the hills and

vales along, Earth is bursting into song”

was very much the national mood, and

Clifton naturally refl ected this.

The Cliftonian was full of patriotic

fervour, printing a lengthy (and not very

good) poem entitled The New Crusade

by GC Garratt (WiH 1882-1887) which

very much catches the mood of the time

as the stories of German atrocities in

Belgium began to dominate the media:

For, lo, a mightier tyrant hath sprung forth, Yea, bloodier, and more ruthless, with a leerMouthing the Holy Name, and in his wakeA smoke of blazing towns, and piteous cryOf women wailing over helpless babes,Maimed, dying, starving, tortured to the shoutof hellish laughter, follows, and dogs his stepsAnd chokes his impious prayers. Therefore ariseYe noble of all nations! Raise the gageThus pitiless fl ung down! Hurl back the hordesOf murdering warriors, raging chiefs, andAll that godless multitude, whose burning trackDevours the peaceful earth, and ruining castInto the pit they digged.

The Secretary reported on behalf of the Head Master the arrangements which had been made with the Home Offi ce for RWG Tapken, a German boy in the School, to remain at Clifton.

Given the groundswell of anti-German

sentiment, whipped up by the popular

press, Dr King’s and Clifton’s stance

on this was pretty remarkable and

later extended, unsuccessfully, to

an attempt to keep Tapken at Clifton

as a Laboratory Technician once he

had reached school leaving age. He

eventually returned to Germany where

he died in 1919. Within this context,

several HMC schools came under

pressure both from the media and from

parents to remove any German-born

master from their respective Common

Rooms. At Ipswich, the governors were

asked to retire the German master and

replace the language with Spanish, for

example. It was again to Clifton’s credit

that their own Otto Siepmann continued

to teach there throughout the war in

spite of several parental demands

towards the end of the war that Council

should dismiss him and in spite of

several parents removing their children

from Clifton as a protest against his

employment.

If anti-German sentiment ran high then

the same can also be said in the Public

Schools of the time for pro-Belgian

feeling, and Clifton was not alone when

it opened its doors to Belgian exiles,

admitting Jack and Harry Jefferys

to School House in September 1914,

Council noting that it would

6

These brothers were to be the fi rst of

quite a few boys from Belgium, and,

curiously, from Romania over the next

few years, to fi nd a safe haven from the

war in their respective countries in the

elegant suburb of Clifton. Jack Jefferys

left in April 1915 and his brother a year

later, signing up as a Private in the

Belgian Army. He was killed in action

in 1918 in the fi nal campaign of the war

along with another Belgian Cliftonian,

Maurice Navir.

The last edition of the School magazine

for 1914 opened with these words:

not charge the Entrance Fee in their cases nor make any charge for Tuition for the proportion of the present term during which they had been in attendance.

We cannot help feeling the inappropriateness of any words of ours at a time like this, when almost every day shows the name of one or more past members of the School in the list of casualties from the Front. Not only has the list of killed and wounded reached terrible proportions but there are many whose names appear in them with whom present members of the School were personally acquainted. While we deeply deplore the loss of those who have fallen in the defence of their country, we are able also to be proud of the honours the School has already won.

7

The First to Fall

Twenty-seven names were recorded as having been killed,

with thirty-six wounded or missing, refl ecting the serious

fi ghting that had taken place between Mons and Ypres.

Some of these deaths would have hit

hard since six of those killed had left

Clifton between 1911 and 1913, within

living memory of many of the boys at the

school. One such was John McPherson

(ST 1908-1911):

Another was William Campbell

(OH 1908-1913):

He was wounded at Ypres, and died as a result of his subsequent exertions. Many Cliftonians have joined the ranks of the Army during the present crisis rather than wait for a commission. He is the fi rst to die as a private soldier, and his death is deeply regretted.

Known as he was to large numbers still in the School, his early death is greatly mourned. For both in his House and in the School he showed that he had high ideals which in no small degree he was successful in approaching.

the watchword of the time. Nevil Shute,

a boy at Shrewsbury in 1914, later wrote

in his piece entitled Slide Rule that

One will never really know what impact

the growing list of deaths year after year

had on the boys at Clifton. They have

left few personal records, stoicism, that

much underrated virtue today, being

we knelt praying for their souls in Chapel, knowing, in a year or so, the little boys in our houses would be kneeling for us.

one morning we noticed a piece of paper, pinned to the chapel door. It read: “Killed in action: AEJ Collins, Captain, Royal Engineers.” That name to us was a legend, for its bearer had made the highest score in the history of cricket, and on our Clifton ground. I had thought of him as one of the Ancients in a furry top-hat, defending something like a croquet hoop with a prehistoric type of bat. It came as shock to discover that he had only left the school twelve years ago, and was now lying dead in France. Later we became hardened to these reminders of mortality; but that fi rst death blow against one of the immortals was hard to accept.

At Clifton, the lists of casualties

were pinned on the Chapel Door.

One contemporary remembered that

8

The Cliftonian was similarly struck,

reporting his death as follows:

World famous – to his own unceasing annoyance – for a phenomenal innings in a Junior School House Match, he distinguished himself at all games, fi ves, rackets, football, boxing; at the same time, he possessed mental abilities of a high order, and won a School scholarship. A regular visitor to Clifton when he was home on leave, he loyally supported the Old Cliftonian Cricket Tour. His death will be a shock to many.

Collins was thus one of the early

casualties of the confl ict. On 11

November the Prussian Guard, one of

the Kaiser’s crack regiments, launched

an attack along the Messines-Menin

Road front in an attempt to break

through and complete the second stage

of the Schlieffen Plan. Collins was

in charge of a sector called Polygon

Wood and, as an engineer rather

than a frontline offi cer, he suddenly

found himself having to rally a motley

assortment of cooks, batmen, clerks

and transport soldiers in an attempt to

hold back the German advance. After

fi erce fi ghting, they were successful but

Collins was mortally wounded – had

he lived he would have undoubtedly

been awarded a DSO at the very least,

and had the Prussian Guard broken

through, given the limited resources

of the BEF, the First Battle of Ypres

might have proved decisive for all the

wrong reasons as far as the allies were

concerned.

“Proud of the honours the School has

already won.” Chief amongst these was

a VC awarded to Capt. Theodore Wright

(SH 1897-1900). Wright had already

exhibited extraordinary courage in the

fi rst days of the fi ghting at Mons where,

in spite of being wounded in the head,

he continued to try to connect up an

explosive charge in order to delay the

German advance by blowing up a vital

bridge.

On 14 September, at Vailly, under heavy

fi re he ensured that the 5th Cavalry

Brigade managed to cross a river via a

pontoon bridge which he and his men

had just laid down. The cost in terms

of casualties during this operation was

high and he personally ensured that

many of his wounded men made the

safety of a shelter. Whilst engaged upon

this, he was shot and killed.

9

This attack was one which required

considerable courage given the

unpredictability of air fl ight in 1914.

Briggs and his fellow offi cers fl ew over

250 miles across mountainous terrain

and over 100 miles of German territory.

Briggs was indeed captured, but he

escaped in 1917 whilst being relocated

by jumping off a train at Krefeld, and he

made his way back to England to live to

tell the tale. He died in 1963 although,

poignantly, his son had joined the RAF

in the Second World War and was shot

down and killed.

Bravery of a very different kind was

exhibited by Squadron Commander

Edward Briggs who had joined what was

then the Pre in September 1893, leaving

two years later. Before the war he was

one of several Old Cliftonians involved

in the developing air industry and in

1912 he held the record for the highest

fl ight (8270 feet) in the Royal Navy. In

November 1914 he was awarded the

Croix de Chevalier of the Legion of

Honour, the citation reading

On Saturday a fl ight of aeroplanes, under the command of Squadron Commander EF Briggs of the Royal Naval Air Section….fl ew from French territory to the Zeppelin airship factory at Friedrichshafen. All three pilots in succession fl ew down to close range under a heavy fi re from guns, mitrailleuses and rifl es, and launched their bombs according to instructions Commander Briggs is reported to have been shot down wounded, and taken to hospital as a prisoner. Both the other offi cers have returned safely to French territory, though their machines were damaged by gunfi re. They report positively that all the bombs reached their objective, and that serious damage was done to the Zeppelin factory.

1915

Against this background, School life ground on although

there were grumbles about the amount of marching the

boys had to endure, and the impact of the war on the

quality of food, one Cliftonian noting that

A letter to the School magazine in

December 1914 gives a little insight into

one aspect of the national mood:

meat, butter and eggs were short. Some said this was due to the German submarine blockade of our island; others mischievously suggested it was due to the stinginess of the housemasters who fed us.

It has occurred to me that it would be a good thing if, during the holidays, members of the Junior OTC were allowed to wear a distinctive badge approved by the War Offi ce, my reason being that many members of the Junior OTC throughout Great Britain are above the average height for the Army and below the age limit, and yet look older than they really are. The public, not being aware that they are doing their part in preparing themselves for the defence of their King and country, may quite easily look upon them as “shirkers.”

A Lecture on Strategy and War was

delivered at the School by Hilaire

Belloc, whilst collecting magazines

for minesweeping crews, and a talk

on the uses of Gun-cotton brought the

term quietly to a close, the editor of the

magazine remarking

10

We can look back with satisfaction on the excellent amount of work which the Corps has got through, and we can be sure that all members of the Special Instruction Squad who receive commissions at future dates will fi nd the experience gained invaluable.

1915 dawned relatively quietly for

Cliftonians. Casualties recorded

were quite light (ten killed and twelve

wounded by the New Year) and bore

little relation to what lay ahead within

this context. The editorial for the

February 1915 edition of the magazine

opened with these words:

It is with no feeling of ease that we take up our pen to write during this tremendous crisis. Such world-shaking events are being brought to pass, such momentous issues are at stake, that we cannot help feeling the comparative triviality of the affairs with which we are concerned.

This, however, did not stop a host of

complaints from pupils concerning

the over-prompt closing of the Chapel

doors, the ringing of the School bell,

increasing use of the name “College”

instead of “School” and the poor nature

of the School’s heating system, the last

of these being explained perhaps by a

Council Minute in January:

The Secretary reported that Mr Gullick had estimated that owing to the war he might not be able to supply the full quantity of Anthracite Coal contracted for, a contingency by the War Clause in his contract.

The magazine also published a poem

written under the name of Gerald

Caldwell which had recently been

published in The Times

(From a Private Soldier in England)O not in vain we have seen the royal decrease,The splendid sinking of the slow-dying year;O never again so dear to us, so dearThese golden days, these nights of starlit peaceWhen the moon rides in white-cloud companies.

O ye that have eyes to see, and ears to hear,Who wait the call across the narrow seas,God is not mocked, God mocks us not with these, But, in the inferior fortress of the heart,That we may fail not to fulfi l our partNor altogether lose Him when we fi ghtNor, falling, altogether fall forlorn,Hangs up remembered banners of the dawn,And turns our faces inward to the light.

The poet was, in fact, Gerald Siordet (SH

1899-1904). Of Huguenot descent, he

left Clifton for Oxford and then went to

London to try to make his way as a poet,

artist and critic. As a freelance writer of

literary reviews he found work with the

Folio Society, and the Medici Society,

and as a cataloguer of the V & A’s ivory

collection. Well-known in artistic circles of

the time – Glyn Philpot, John Sargent and

Brian Hatton all produced portraits of him

– he volunteered as a Private when war

broke out and was later commissioned,

winning the Military Cross. He was killed

in Mesopotamia in 1917.

11

This recollection, along with letters

complaining about the savagery of

haircuts now demanded for OTC

parades, the lack of punctuality when

it came to the Corps being dismissed,

and the usual round of Concerts and

Lectures indicate that, on the surface

at least, life at Clifton attempted to

continue along its well-trodden path.

In truth, there is no reason that it

should not have done so.

After his death Philpot arranged to have

a slim volume of his drawings and poems

published privately, prompting one

reviewer to write:

Our fi rst thought on reading these few pages is deep regret. Here is another young poet of whose promised gift the war has robbed our nation’s literature!

Throughout 1915, Clifton casualties

began to mount up as the School began

to realise that the war was not, after all,

going to be over as quickly as had been

anticipated. An insight into life at school

comes from the unpublished diary of

Oliver Folds who arrived at Clifton

in 1915:

Meat was scarce but we survived and we did have fi sh. The potato crops had got some sort of disease, which was a great blow and was replaced by lots of rice…..…..there was very little selection in the Grubber…..I suppose life was pretty normal with a few extra fi re drills. School House, being near the School buildings, ran the School Fire Brigade and had a few practices where one got pretty wet as the idea was to turn the hose on everyone else.

The war was now in full swing and food was short and we were rationed. There were considerable shortages particularly of butter, meat and potatoes. We had some so-called potato butter, which was one ounce of butter to a pound of very fi nely mashed potatoes.

12

13

The result was that “the customary

festivities” were abandoned and

Commem weekend reduced to a Chapel

Service at which the Dean of St Paul’s

was invited to preach. Dean Inge was

a clerical fi gure of some stature, and

he sounded a warning in his sermon

concerning the future:

Cliftonians at War

Council had debated how to approach Commem in 1915.

Many HMC schools had decided to suspend all forms of

celebration whilst the war continued and the Governors

decided to leave it up to the Head Master, Dr King.

We have been presuming our fancied security, we have become frivolous, self-indulgent and careless. I hope and believe that the day has come just in time to save us from ourselves, our worst enemies. It will be a new and strange England to which we will wake up after peace is signed.

Dr King Dean Inge

14

an outstanding sportsman, who was

to be one of the last Clifton casualties

of the war, for it refl ects what so many

young men must have thought and felt

as they faced the likelihood of their

death in battle:

He concluded by urging his

congregation to work hard to restore a

peaceful and prosperous nation:

Might all the boys here do something, however small and insignifi cant, for God and our country, so that in the holy temple which is rising before God, stone by stone, and age by age, some little piece of honest material contributed by your lives might be accepted by your Great Master Builder.

“Small” and “insignifi cant” were words

that could hardly be applied to the

ninety-three killed or wounded recorded

in the June edition of the magazine,

two of whom, perhaps, stand out for

very different reasons. Henry Miller

(WiH) came to Clifton in January 1909

and left to go up to Cambridge in 1913.

He was one of the fi rst to volunteer for

Kitchener’s Army. Wounded twice, he

insisted on going back to the Front and

was killed near Ypres in May 1915. His

Commanding Offi cer wrote:

He proved himself an excellent offi cer, and it was his devotion to duty in not leaving his trench while he could stand that caused his death.

whilst one of his men stated

If ever a man deserved a Victoria Cross he did. During the few days he was out the fi rst time, on one occasion there were a number of wounded lying in front of his trench suffering dreadfully from thirst, but no-one dared to go out to them except him. Amidst a hail of shell and bullets he conveyed water to them, with the utmost coolness assuaging their sufferings.

Such bravery from one so young in

a sense should not surprise given

the emphasis on duty and service to

others that lay at the heart of a Clifton

education. The shortness of a life

knowing little more than childhood and

Clifton is all the more poignant but was,

of course, increasingly common as

more and more young men signed up

straight after leaving school. Something

of this is captured in a letter written to a

friend by George Whitehead,

Then there’s the ripping old – not in the sense ancient – buildings. Go and stand in the bottom corner of The Close one fi ne evening at about 7.15 when there is fi elding out all round; can you imagine anything more perfect? The sun sending great long shadows from behind School House and the Wilson Tower and the dome of the Chapel, and everything showing up against the skyline. If I was an architect given the job of designing Heaven, I’d make it Clifton.

15

At the other end of the scale was

another VC awarded to one of Clifton’s

“regulars.” Cyril Martin (DH) had left in

1910 and went straight into the Army.

On 12 March at Spanbroek Molen in

Belgium he volunteered to lead a small

bombing party against a section of the

enemy trenches which was holding up

the British counter-offensive. Before he

started, he was wounded but he carried

on regardless, captured the trench and

held it for over two hours until a general

withdrawal was ordered. He went on to

have a highly successful military career,

rising to the rank of Brigadier and

serving in Iraq in the Second World War.

He died, aged 88, in 1980, appropriately

at his home near Woolwich Barracks.

Reactions at Home

Already the question of how to commemorate the fallen

was beginning to exercise the minds of grieving parents,

of whom Bishop Percival was also one, as well as both

Council and the Old Cliftonian Society.

The result was the setting up of “Special

War Exhibitions”:

The movement for funding temporary Exhibitions at Clifton to meet the special emergency created by the war has made good progress since the issue, ten days ago, of a circular by the Old Cliftonian Society. At the moment four exhibitions of the annual value of £60 for six years have been completely provided for.

These were to be the fi rst of many such

gifts, some of which are still silently

with us a hundred years on.

As 1915 drew to a close, there

was clearly a more sombre feel in

the School. Huntly Gordon wrote

of “Business as usual” being the

watchword whilst they went about the

routine of lessons and games with not

much thought for what next year might

bring, but he did observe

16

17

Latterly, however, the war had taken on a grimness that could not be ignored. Battle after battle brought no result…..with lengthening casualty lists and no results to show for them.

Amongst these growing losses was

the third son of a former Head Master,

Canon Wilson. His son had gone out to

France as an Intelligence Offi cer, his

last words to his men being “I’m done

for, keep your courage up.” One of the

Sergeants in his Regiment later wrote:

I have felt today as if someone had cut a big piece out of my world….As an offi cer he was perfect in every respect, and always carried out his duty in the work he loved and had undertaken for his country.

Another such was Geoffrey Robinson

(NT 1909-1914) who was killed on 20

September in an attack in which only

120 men of his battalion survived. He

had been kind to Huntly Gordon upon

his arrival at Clifton and his death hit

the young Cliftonian hard:

Geoffrey Robinson, who was old enough to get a commission in the 10th Gloucesters at the outbreak of war, wrote to me full of enthusiasm during his fi rst spell in the trenches at Loos. His letter was still in my pocket when I saw his name on the Chapel door…..A fortnight later his mother sent me his silver pencil as a keepsake. From her letter I learned that her other son, not at Clifton, was also killed in the same attack……her heart must have died that day.

Literary contributions refl ected this

deeper awareness of loss and sacrifi ce

but, as with the nation as a whole,

they still tended to refl ect the Brooke/

Newbolt school of thought; the Somme,

and the immense impact that battle was

to have on views concerning the war, lay

in the future. One such poem printed in

the magazine was entitled By Night:

Upon the Close the moon-beams sleep.They clothe with light the Chapel walls,And shadows dark the cloisters steepAnd echoing lone my footstep falls.

So shimmering quiet all tonightYou scarce could dream the world’s afl ame,And half the nations mixed in fi ght,And Europe drenched in blood and shame.

The boys who worked – the boys who played –Where march or halt their feet this hour?In trench or gully unafraidThey front the Dark – they fi ght Death’s power.

and the poet concluded:

And some no more will “tread the pitch”,Or hear the School Song wildly roll;Poor – poor are we – They greatly rich –– They touch – they win God’s fi ery goal.

More than a touch of He Fell Among

Thieves here.

By the end of 1915 over two thousand

Cliftonians were serving and 172 had

lost their lives, exactly four times those

who had perished in the Boer War.

1916

1916 was to prove an important turning point in the war and

how it was perceived on the Home Front, and this is refl ected

in events at Clifton and in the number of Cliftonians who were

killed or wounded during the course of these twelve months.

Another poem from Gerald Siordet

appeared in The Times:

To the DeadSince in the days that may not come againThe sun has shone for us on English fi elds,Since we have marked the years with thanksgiving;Nor been ungrateful for the lovelinessWhich is our England, then tho’ we walk no moreThe woods together, lie in the grass no more,For us the long grass blows, the woods are green.For us the valleys smile, the streams are bright,For us the kind sun still is comfortableAnd the birds sing; and since your feet and mineHave trod the lanes together, climbed the hills,Then in the lanes and on the little hills,Our feet are beautiful for ever more.And you – O if I call you, you will come,Most loved, most lovely faces of my friendsWho are so safely housed within my heart,So parcel of this blessed spirit landWhich is my own heart’s England, so possestOf all its ways to walk familiarlyAnd be at home, that I can count on you.Loving you so, being loved, to wait for me,So may I turn me in, and by some sweetRemembered pathway fi nd you once again.

Then can we walk together, I with you,Or you, or you along some quiet road,And talk the foolish, old, forgiveable talk,And laugh together; you will turn your head,Look as you used to look, speak as you spokeMy friend to me, and I your friend to you.Only when at the the last, by some cross-roadOur longer shadows, falling on the grass,Turn us back homeward, and the setting sunShines like a golden glory round your head,There will be something sudden and strange in you.Then you will lean, and look into my eyes,And I shall see the bright wound at your side,And feel the new blood fl owing in my heart,And I shall hear you speaking in my ear –O, not the old, forgiveable, foolish talk.But fl ames, and exaltations, and desires,But hopes, and comprehensions, and resolves,But holy, incommunicable, things,That like immortal birds sing in my breast.And springing from a fi re of sacrifi ce,Beat with bright wings about the throne of God.

18

19

Of its time, maybe; but it still has the

power to move with its elegiac, wistful

nostalgia for times and friendships

recaptured now only as dreams in a

foreign land.

The year for the School opened with

a Zeppelin scare, the editor of The

Cliftonian reporting

Apart from this, the Corps is taking up most of our time. Parades take place fi ve days a week, though not necessarily for all. We shall retain our position as our Engineering Corps, one of two schools to whom this privilege is provided, and rumour has it that we are to wrestle with a single-lock bridge instead of our old familiar trestle…

…The Zeppelins have cast their shadow over the School. We eat our evening meal in darkness, and in the shaded glimmer of the light we mislay our clothes, and even in bed the horrid fear hangs over us that we may be torn from our couch by our House Master’s shrill whistle of alarm.

Impact on School Life

Chapel routine was also affected since the apparent need

to enforce a blackout meant that the School reverted to

the old routine in place under Glazebrook with Services in

the daylight only on Sundays.

Sunday evening lectures in Big School

were suspended with House activities

substituting as long as the threat

of aerial bombardment existed. The

Debating Society was another casualty.

Bristol and Plymouth were certainly

targets for German air-raids because

of the burgeoning aircraft industry and

munitions production at the former,

and the naval base at the latter. Bristol

City Council was moved to combat this

threat by turning two-thirds of the City’s

street lamps out. In fact, as so often

happens in war, the chances of this ever

happening were remote. The prevailing

winds would have made it well-nigh

impossible for Zeppelins to reach

Bristol. Nevertheless the threat was

enough to have an impact on School life,

one pupil remarking:

The two chief features of the present Term would appear to be the Zeppelin scares and the cat concerts. Would it be presumptuous to suggest that the two might be combined with advantage? On the fi rst note of the feline song let the Houses be raised, and descending by the fi re escape, disable the disturbers of their sleep.

20

The fate of the Zeppelin attacks is

known – the fate of Clifton’s mighty cat

chorus in 1916 remains unrecorded,

but the threat of Clifton being bombed

was enough for Council to take out

extraordinary insurance against

“aircraft damage.” As 1916 unfolded,

Council was much preoccupied with

Staff leaving to join up, the steady fl ow

of gifts in the form of Exhibitions, and

“the releasing of certain masters….

to undertake research work under the

Munitions Inventions Department.”

21

Since these were by and large chemists,

it would appear that Clifton scientists

were being recruited by the War Offi ce

to help in the development of chemical

weapons to counter the increasing use

of gas by Germany on the Western Front.

The fi rst memorial windows in Chapel

were accepted by the School with

gratitude in May. Mrs Seignitz donated

one in memory of her son, and

Major-General Atkinson likewise,

following the death of both his sons.

One of the early casualties of the year

was Lieutenant HP Nott who had left in

1913 and had arrived in France in 1915.

He was the youngest of three brothers,

all of them to give up their lives in the

trenches. They were a remarkable

family, as this testimony from a Private

soldier to their mother concerning the

youngest brother demonstrates:

It was he alone who ventured out to the German trenches gathering valuable information. He was of a brave and fearless disposition, thinking always of his men and doing all possible in his power to make their load lighter. He was here, there, and everywhere, a veritable ministering angel on many occasions.

By the middle of the year, the School

was becoming increasingly aware

of the grim reality of the war and its

consequences. A lecture on the dire

state of the national economy pulled

no punches and many boys would have

quickly understood this as a result of

severe shortages of fare on offer in

the Grubber. A solemn and moving

sermon delivered in Chapel by Canon

Glazebrook left his congregation in no

doubt as to the darkness of the hour,

calling upon the School to remember

its deeply-embedded tradition of service

and urging the boys before him to

honour the service of others:

You must never forget the price for which your privilege had been purchased. The harvest of peace and progress and brotherhood, which you will reap in an Empire united and regenerated by suffering, can only grow from soil which has been fertilized by the blood of our best, our bravest, our dearest. Do you wish to raise a memorial to them? Then register a sacred vow, if aught which you can do may avail, their sacrifi ce shall not have been made in vain.

Even on the cricket fi eld Cliftonians

could not escape the confl ict, as one

contemporary remembered when

involved in the annual match against

the MCC on the Close. Fielding at cover

point he suddenly heard

the unusual sound of a newspaper boy’s cry….down College Road. At fi rst I thought I had misheard him, but the cry was repeated, “Lord Kitchener drowned! Lord Kitchener drowned! Special!” Play stopped…..Then those few who had secured a newspaper passed on the appalling news. It was heard with deep misgivings, presumably by all, certainly by me……There would be no early end to the war now.

22

With the Somme offensive starting in

July, Clifton casualties grew daily, one in

ten serving now having lost their lives.

One such was a Pre master who had

joined the Clifton Staff in 1908. He led

a successful raid on German trenches

but was killed by a shell whilst making

his way back across No Man’s Land. His

Commanding Offi cer wrote to Dr King:

You gave us a good offi cer and a good man. I only wish he had lived to take his honours back to his friends and fellow-masters.

The Pre Head Master, Harry Matthews,

took the news badly and wrote this

testimony:

To those who were privileged to know Harry Alfred Butt he will always remain the type of modesty, loyalty and gallantry. He knew the world as few schoolmasters can do, for he “roughed it” for nearly fi fteen years in the peach orchards and mining centres of California and had travelled extensively in Europe and the West Indies. His devotion to his parents, his loyalty to the School, his affection for the “little lads” in the Pre, endeared him to all who knew him…….Of no one can it more be truly said:

“E’en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth,

In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth.”

Matthews attempted to commemorate

Butt’s name by raising funds for a new

classroom block in the Pre to be named

after him but Council eventually decided

against this on cost grounds. Harry Butt

is commemorated in one of the lancet

windows in the Chapel’s chancel.

Commem came and went, the Bishop of

Bristol making the point that

The sons of the School who have gone forth to war are a refutation of the idea that it is material things which count

and, as Term drew to a close, Clifton

boys looked forward to a summer

break in which many of them would be

involved in a variety of activities, as The

Cliftonian records:

For many years past our relations with the farmers of Gloucestershire and Somerset have been most friendly…..It is therefore with great pleasure that throughout the hay harvest parties of boys have gone out to lend a hand in the hay fi elds, and in this way repay our neighbours to some extent for their friendliness and forbearance.

Others volunteered further afi eld,

101 boys and 9 masters attending a

“Lumber Camp” in East Bergholt in

Suffolk from 1 August to 14 September.

These camps were run on military lines,

the boys living in tents arranged on

three sides of a square. The tents were

camoufl aged because of the real fear of

Zeppelin attacks. Conditions were fairly

primitive and the weather not always

conducive to enjoyable camping, but

one of those who attended looked back

and remembered camp-fi re sing-songs

round a battered piano, boxing matches,

football and the moon and stars,

canoeing and boating on the Stour and

tennis parties held by local families in

nearby villages.

23

The work of felling and stripping trees,

many of them for use in the trenches as

props, was hard and monotonous:

but in spite of that and in spite of the weather, it was a good holiday, for were we not living in the open air all the time, and were we not doing something for the nation?

Huntly Gordon, who had found it

impossible to sing the hymns in his fi nal

Chapel Service so moved was he at the

thought of leaving Clifton which “had

come to mean so much” – some things

remain immune to the march of Time

– was one of over 120 who attended the

OTC Camp at Tidworth Pennings and he

later recalled

The programme exceeded our expectations. Contingents from many famous public schools were there, and we were given demonstrations of every aspect of warfare. We put on gas masks, hesitatingly entered a tent full of chlorine gas, and were relieved to fi nd ourselves unaffected by it.

No Health & Safety or Risk Assessment

documentation required in those days!

The fi nal day saw a realistic night-

operation involving a trench attack:

On the dot of time whistles blew, up the ladders we went, and out into no-man’s-land, while the barrage crashed deafeningly overhead. Several hundred cadets from rival schools charged forwards, and a free fi ght for the honour of our respective schools was just beginning when the bugles blew the “standfast”, searchlights were switched on, and we all adjourned for hot cocoa. That night’s operation was the most realistic piece of training that ever came my way. We thought it a pity that the war itself could not have been conducted on similar lines.

If the Clifton war poems of 1914 had

been full of patriotic fervour and those

of 1915 had displayed a yearning and a

nostalgia born of the growing realisation

concerning the nature of the confl ict,

then, as with war poetry in general,

the 1916 poems begin to reveal an

understanding of, and a sadness at,

the scale of the loss. As one Cliftonian

noted, the casualty lists pinned to the

Chapel door were getting longer and

longer, and this is refl ected in a poem

published in The Cliftonian entitled

Somewhere in France, which confronts

for the fi rst time how many of the dead

were increasingly being denied a fi nal,

known resting-place:

24

Somewhere in France, ‘mid crash and blaze,O’er riven earth, through shell-shock’d airCharging upon the entrench’d foe, While surged the battle forth and fro,He fell – none witting where or when.

Where to his grave can Love repair,To lay her wreath of sorrow there?Tis No Man’s Land; and no men know –“Somewhere in France.”

Somewhere in France? – Nay, whereso’erYoung hearts are brave, young faces fair;Where fresh winds blow, and sweet fl owers grow,And whispering streams through woodlands fl owThough all be bleak, and cold, and bare,“Somewhere in France.”

The Autumn Term saw Clifton thrown into

crisis:

Disappointing and unsatisfactory is the only verdict that can be given on the achievements of our football XV this Term. We fi nish up the season with defeat in every match in the 1st XV….This season must appear in the light of a crisis, for it is apparent that the present system on Big-Side is a failure.

The war had now become such a fi xed

part of life as a whole, rather than an

extraordinary event in its own right, that

fewer and fewer references to it can

be seen in various Clifton publications

and documentation. During the winter

holidays, evidence of the impact that the

German U-Boat campaign was having

on the nation’s food supply can be seen

at the School:

During the Christmas holidays members of North and South Town were engaged upon the task of levelling the ground at Beggar’s Bush, under the supervision of Mr Imlay, and now a portion of that fi eld is being cultivated, but owing to the effects of a severe frost it is impossible to say yet what kind of vegetables the authorities will select for plantation.

One of the early casualties of 1917 was

Lieutenant Herbert McLaughlin (WiH

1912-1915), his elder brother having

been previously killed in the year he left

Clifton. The cross carried in Chapel today

was presented by his father in memory of

his two boys, but he did not live to see his

gift, dying before the cross was fi nished

and presented to the School – one of the

sadder footnotes to Clifton at war.

Thrift was becoming an increasingly

rallying cry both nationally and at School.

The Sixth Form rose to this challenge as

a note in Council’s Finance Committee

Minutes for 17 January reveals:

A memorandum was received from the Sixth Form asking that the cash value of the various Prizes to be awarded this year might be invested in War Savings Certifi cates, the said Certifi cates to be held by the College and realised after the War when the Prizes should be given in books to the winners.

25

Memorial

In common with the rest of the country thoughts were

beginning to turn towards how the dead could be most

effectively commemorated.

Douglas Haig (SH 1877-1879), newly

promoted to Field Marshal, wrote to

Frances Younghusband (SH 1876-1880)

about the growing number of named

War Exhibitions being offered by Clifton

as a result of the efforts of the OC

Society. By 1917, seventeen such awards

had been founded. Haig concluded:

It is only right that the sons of those who have sacrifi ced everything for their country should be given the chance of an education such as their fathers would have wished for them, and the knowledge that the chance will be given will bring comfort to the minds of many who are yet serving.

founded, windows dedicated, and splendid endowments made in memory of some of those who have fallen in the war.

But, natural and entirely good as these are, they seem to me not to reach the whole heart of our feeling for those who have gone. Many of us have lost brothers; some of us sons; most of us, inevitably, school-friends, to whom we should rejoice to grave some personal memorial for them that will come after.

Such thoughts were echoed in a letter

to The Cliftonian from Cuthbert Buckle

(OH 1894-1904) who had been a master

at St Paul’s when war broke out, and

who immediately joined the RASC. He

survived the war and went on to work

for the League of Nations although his

brother Henry (ST 1892-1897), did not,

being one of the fi rst to fall in 1914:

Many of us as the war goes on must be fi nding that our thoughts, set in the main so steadily forward, turn at times, perhaps with growing insistence, to the achievements of the past two years and a half, and, above all, to the doers of great deeds done. After the war is over there will be of course a Memorial or Memorials;already, indeed, scholarships are being

His suggestion was that the Chapel seats

should have named plaques attached to

them with the name and other details

such as House, dates at Clifton, regiment

and where and when they fell inscribed

upon them, the seats preferably being

the ones that they occupied whilst at

school. Nothing came of this idea but it

is the fi rst mention of the need to create

a permanent, physical Memorial to

Clifton’s dead which was fi nally to see

expression in the building of Memorial

Arch. The fi nal logic of his letter was and

is hard to refute:

The main thing is the idea. What I suggest would institute a personal, living, and growing memorial, bringing back and setting for ever in the Chapel the memory of Cliftonians who had loved Clifton as she should be loved, and confi rming in this very heart of the School a greater tradition than ever for those yet to sit in these seats of the mighty dead.

1917

The early months of 1917 at Clifton were dominated by the

state of games, the experiment of abandoning runs and

concentrating more on athletics and football having made

not a jot of difference to the results.

The consequence of all this was the

setting up of a committee to discuss the

whole matter with the Old Cliftonians

and others “who have the interests of

the School at heart” and to come up with

a solution. Other than that, the magazine

no longer comments on casualties, such

a routine occurrence had they become,

and contented itself with reporting that

all prizes at the Annual Sports, barring

the cups, were done away with “as a war

economy” and that the School would be

entertaining Colonel Gordon Leith of the

Army Canteen Committee whose task

was to expand arrangements for Clifton

boys to go on camps during August

and September.

Clifton’s Roll of Honour by June 1917

had risen to 350 and included the

remaining brothers of the Nott family.

Their Commanding Offi cer wrote as

follows to their parents:

Your family have played truly a noble part in the great war, and it will be some consolation to you to know how unselfi shly and bravely your sons gave their lives for their country.

whilst a letter from a former Head

Master could have put it no better:

I knew and loved all your boys. They were men who counted for something in College life, and who were not afraid to take a strong Christian stand. Their infl uence was all for the good.

26

27

Clifton poems continued to move in a

solemn direction in terms of addressing

loss – not much mention now of glory.

Dr FS Boas (BH 1877-1881), an eminent

writer, submitted a poem about his

nephew, Ernest, the concluding verses

of which sound a very different tone:

There, blithely venturing in the van,A kinsman of mine own,In years a boy, in heart a man,Was radiantly o’erthrown.“Gay as a lark” – the tribute thisBy chief and comrade penned.He sang his way to the AbyssAnd smiled on Death as friend.For him no sombre requiem,No threnody of tears,Who bartered for Youth’s diademThe dross of After-Years.

This was followed by an extraordinary

poem refl ecting the wholesale change

in attitude to war by the middle of 1917.

Composed by a grieving father, there is

now anger and helplessness here which

no amount of patriotic fervour or noble

sentiment could possibly assuage:

He died; and me a wild eidolon seized,Revenge. A fl aming curtain of desireFor victory and revenge hid from my sightThe inviolable depths where gods inspireThe soul of men with knowledge of the Right,And torment is appeased.There was one service, and by this, they said,We could repay the living and….. the dead.Repay, we whom our days’ declineHad forced to watch the sufferings of youthThought only to repay; but few were foundSo damned in soul that they could shroud the truthUnder a velvet path of lies, and hound To death all the divine.The beast in man may hold the god at bay,But silver-tongued the beast can ever slay.

They told us that golden, glorious pageOf History, when all the world had bowed‘Neath the all-shadowing plumes of Germany’s crest;Would hail us as the feats to have allowedNo sentiment to enter in their breast,The fi rst fruits of the ageWhen men of iron should Reason throne aboveAnd discipline the vagaries of love.

The war-lords’ summons whispered through our homes,We, mad for victory, answered with a shout,And went. Mine was the work to guideThat yielding mass along the ways and outInto the tanks; to watch their oily glideWithin the vast steel domes,Wherein the morning gloom they heave and roll,And every bubble’s pregnant with a soul.

Even those walls of steel denied their gleam,And dully lowered. I thought the putrid sea,The starving eyes and bloodless tangled limbsFuel, scarce worthy of the mournful hymnsSung by the hissing steam;Till for a moment short the vengeful tideRevealed the fi gure of my son who died.

No boy at Clifton reading this would now

have any illusions about what awaited

him in Flanders.

By the middle of 1917, discussions

about a suitable Memorial were moving

forward, the editor of the School

magazine writing:

By the time these lines appear the war will have lasted for just three years. 365 names now appear on the Roll of Honour; that is, of every eight Old Cliftonians who have been serving the King in the Navy and the Army one has given his life. A heavy toll has indeed been taken of our best and bravest. And as each one falls, two others step forward to fi ll the gap. “Clifton, remember these thy sons!” are words that are ever before us, and many of us are wondering what form of memorial will be selected as the most worthy to commemorate our fallen heroes.

28

Several OCs had written in support of

the suggestion made by Captain Buckle

concerning Chapel plaques, but the OC

Society decided to set up a committee

to consider this matter in some depth.

Food shortages continued to affl ict the

School but many looked back in later

years on that period with fondness:

Looking back they were wonderful and happy times for which I shall always be grateful

recalled one such. Oliver Folds

remembered an amusing anecdote

relating to food shortages in School

House in 1917:

In our House we had a South African called Terry East and knowing we were hard up for food, his people in South Africa sent him a leg of biltong…..We did not know how to deal with it, nor did Mrs Franklin. So after much boiling and other cooking it still remained as hard as wood and sadly eventually went into the dustbin.

Commem was moved to the end of

June and once again there was no

Prize Giving. The sermon was preached

by Canon Wilson, who foresaw the

founding of the League of Nations when

he told the boys that he hoped to live

long enough to see a “federation of free

nations” which will work to make war

only a “tradition of the past.”

Unlike many HMC schools, Clifton’s

pupil numbers, after an initial drop,

did not suffer much doubtless to the

considerable relief of Council’s Finance

Committee. By October 1917, there were

650 pupils in the School and this, whilst

being welcomed fi nancially, presented

its own logistic diffi culties in terms of

feeding and teaching them with a Staff

depleted by war service. Once again,

large numbers of Clifton boys had

worked on the land during the summer.

One camp, mostly involving logging and

potato-picking, was based in Wareham

in Dorset, whilst the other was a

more mobile unit assisting farmers

in Lostwithiel, Looe and Liskeard

in Cornwall – “Fun but hard work”

commented one attendee. However,

the boys covered themselves in credit

with locals, offi cial returns being full of

praise for their work.

The Roll of Honour had now reached

402, one of whom was the Clifton

master Harry Clissold. Canon

Glazebrook preached about him to

the School in October 1917, talking

of the example he had set and of his

oft-spoken phrase to the boys – “What

matters is not what we do but who we

are” – and concluding

We must often lose our heroes; but it is the loss which proves them to be heroes. Our grief is the price we pay for learning their value.

So this day to day picture of life at

Clifton crystallizes into this curious

combination of schoolboy laughter, of

well-worn routines, punctuated with

moments of quiet solemnity and sorrow.

Whilst one correspondent found the

state of the Chapel Quad the most

pressing issue of the day, another was

beginning to formulate proposals for a

tangible memorial:

My point is that whatever form the memorial takes it should be regarded as a consecrated spot, and every Cliftonian, now and to come, who passes by should raise his hat or make his salute, as a recognition that he owes to the dead honoured there his liberty and his right to move unfettered in the world.

29

I believe it has been proposed that a memorial arch should be built at the entrance from College Road. May I add to that by suggesting there should be cloisters of moderate length beyond the archway, fl anked by rooms dedicated to memorials, trophies, and historical records of this world-wide upheaval. Should this idea be carried out, those belonging to the School who have given their lives could be suitably commemorated on the walls of the cloisters.

My hope is that for all time those Cliftonians who stood in the breach and gave everything shall be held in daily remembrance.

Apart from the normal round of House

matches, the College also hosted a

Lecture on the evolution of submarines

and submarine warfare, and the whole

school was taken down to the Triangle

Picture House to see the offi cial

Government fi lm of the war in Italy.

In addition, Clifton entered the NRA

Sniping Competition, coming fi rst. Oliver

Folds remembered the occasion:

One was automatically in the OTC and this enabled the older boys going into the Army to get a commission after quite a short training in a cadet battalion. The Corps was one of only two RE Corps which meant that besides the ordinary rifl e drill you were taught how to build bridges. This was done on some bridging pits on the Close or, if pontoon bridges, on the Zoo pond – an extra attraction for visitors to the Zoo.

I remember on one occasion that we were building a pontoon when a small party of offi cers came to watch and later we were assembled in Big School for a talk by a rather ordinary looking Major. But when he took off his greatcoat for the lecture one saw the most decorated soldier ever up to that time – General, later Field Marshal Lord Birdwood, who was an OC. We also had a visit from another very well known soldier, Field Marshal Robertson. An extraordinary man who rose from the ranks which was very unusual in those days. He came to present a trophy to a boy in our House, Douglas McDougall, who had won the top prize for rifl e shooting for a cadet at Bisley. It was immediately after breakfast and on a very cold day and the Corps was assembled in the Quad. Several boys fainted and Robertson was not amused and said so.

Lord Birdwood

Field Marshal Robertson

30

As the year drew to a close, a shadow

was cast over the School with the

resignation as Chairman of Council of

the founding Head Master, now Bishop,

John Percival due to failing health. The

School was in good heart – full, healthy

and having enjoyed a term of reasonable

weather. Football results had failed

again to match this, but the editor of

The Cliftonian was at pains to remind his

readers that

more serious things, naturally and properly in times like these, occupy much of the time and most of the energy of the older boys.

Casualties continued to mount

remorselessly, and the magazine

recorded a further twenty-three killed

and twenty-seven wounded, many of

them recent leavers and thus known

to boys and masters at Clifton. On 22

November, the OC Society met at the

Central Buildings in Westminster:

The report and the balance sheet having been adopted, Sir Henry Newbolt proposed the following resolution:- That the Clifton College War Memorial consist of three parts; (1) a permanent memorial to be erected at Clifton, (2) an Exhibition fund for sons of Old Cliftonians killed or incapacitated in the war, and (3) an Endowment Fund.

This proposal was seconded by the

Head Master, Dr King, who rose to

speak, reminding the meeting of the

lines on the South African Memorial

and recounting

one of those who fell quite early in the war writing home shortly before his death, said that the thing that had been in his mind and helped him to go through what he had to go through, and to do what he had to do were the words “Clifton, Remember”. Probably those words had helped other old Clifton boys to do their duty. He therefore thought in any memorial set up they should have something which appealed to the imagination and would speak to the boys in generations to come.

Sir Henry Newbolt

31

1918

1918 opened to a new sporting regime designed, it was hoped,

to halt the decline in Clifton sport. Over 16s were divided into

four packs which ran once a week on Saturday afternoons.

Tuesday afternoons were to be given over

to engineering, a short Cross-Country race

was to be introduced and Athletic Sports

taken more seriously.

Signs of increased economic hardship

abounded, including the reduction in font

size for the magazine in order to save paper

along with the cancellation of the School

Orchestral Concert, the Director of Music,

Dr Beachcroft, giving instead a lecture on

“How to listen to Music.”

More memorial windows were donated

to Chapel, perhaps the most poignant of

these being those on the south side of the

chancel, depicting St Augustine and St

Oswald. The former was donated by two

families whose sons had been the very best

of friends at Clifton, as the dedication reads:

To the Glory of God, and in loving memory of FW Marston and LC Wall, who fell fi ghting in France. Firm friends in life, death severed them, but for a space.

For most conspicuous bravery and self-sacrifi ce. When a unit on his left was driven back, thus leaving his fl ank in the air and his company practically surrounded, he

fearlessly exposed himself to re-adjust the line, walking up and down within fi fty yards of the enemy under a withering fi re. He personally removed several wounded men and was the last to leave the village. Later he again re-organised the line, exposing himself regardless of all danger the whole time, and when the enemy four times counter-attacked he sprang each time upon the parapet, deliberately risking his life, and being eventually mortally wounded, in order to stimulate his command. After the enemy had broken through on his left, he again mounted the parapet, and with a few men – who were inspired by his great example – forced them once more to withdraw, thereby undoubtedly saving the left fl ank.

Food shortages continued to exercise

the minds of the School administration

and Dr King was asked to give Council

a full report on how food rationing was

affecting the boarders and what steps he

was taking to ensure that the boys were

being fed adequately. German attempts

on the Western Front to make a decisive

breakthrough brought another Victoria

Cross. GHT Paton (WaH 1909-1914) had

already gained the Military Cross for bravery

in a previous campaign. At Gonnelieu he

behaved with quite extraordinary courage at

a time when all seemed lost, as the citation

for his Victoria Cross suggests:

32

He was just 22.

Throughout the war, the Library had

benefi ted from gifts purchased by Old

Cliftonians at Red Cross sales, one of

which was a letter from Lord Nelson.

In May 1918, Henry Newbolt gave the

Library one of his poems, entitled

A Letter from the Front. The whole tenor

of this piece is very far removed from

his earlier verse – many soldiers had

carried copies of Vitaï Lampada in their

pockets as they went over the top and

“Playing the Game” was one of the

recurring catchphrases of the war. But

Newbolt’s son George had been badly

wounded and never really recovered,

which affected his father deeply for

the rest of his life. Gone is the naïve

patriotism of his pre-war verse to be

replaced with a wistful and somewhat

puzzled comment on the whole

incongruity of war at the Front:

I was out early to-day, spying aboutFrom the top of a haystack – Such a lovely morning –And when I mounted again to canter backI saw across a fi eld in the broad sunlightA young Gunner Subaltern, stalking alongWith a rook-rifl e held at the ready, and – would You believe it? –A domestic cat, soberly marching beside him.

So I laughed, and felt quite disposed to The youngster,And shouted out “the top of the morning” to him,And wished him “Good sport!” – And then I rememberedMy rank, and his, and what I ought to be doing:And I rode nearer, and added, “I can only supposeYou have not seen the Commander-in-Chief’s orderForbidding English offi cers to annoy their AlliesBy hunting and shooting.”But he stood and salutedAnd said earnestly, “I beg your pardon, Sir,I was only going out to shoot a sparrowTo feed my cat with.”So there was the whole picture,The lovely early morning, the occasional shellScreeching and scattering past us, The empty landscape, –Empty, except for the young Gunner salutingAnd the cat anxiously watching his Every movement.

I may be wrong, and I may have told it badly,But it struck me as being extremely ludicrous.

By July, the desperate fi ghting on

the Western Front can be seen in the

long list of casualties appearing in the

School magazine. That summer over

fi fty Cliftonians were killed, over seventy

wounded and nineteen taken prisoner

– though both serving Cliftonians and

the School were not to know that the

war was, in fact, grinding at last to a

conclusion as an exhausted German

Army and a collapsing Home Front in

Germany itself were beginning to make

it impossible for Germany to continue

with the confl ict. None of this was

apparent at School:

33

We are now at the close of another School year, and one nearing the fourth anniversary of the outbreak of war, whose end still seems as far as ever; and this year we are not even comforted, as we have been for the last two or three years, by the assurance that the war will certainly be over by Christmas.

Among those who were reported killed

was Robert Reynolds, who had left

Clifton in 1916 after a successful career

culminating in him captaining the 1st

XV. He went straight into the Army and

was killed by a shell landing near his

dugout. He was just nineteen and was

buried in the military cemetery at Anzin,

west of Arras.

School life thus meandered on – a

lecture entitled “Belgium under

Germany” was given to the boys

refl ecting perhaps the growing debate

nationally on what the war aims of the

confl ict actually were, the invasion of

Belgium having long receded into the

past. The arrival of the Americans, too,

touched Clifton:

On July 4th the Corps took part in a procession through Bristol to commemorate America’s Independence Day, and the same evening a detachment of American troops marched through the School precincts from the Zoo to College Road, and were heartily cheered by the School.

Thus began a relationship between the

US Army and Clifton which was to take

on a far deeper meaning some twenty-

fi ve years later.

Once again the summer holidays saw

the boys working on the land:

We have had a number of opportunities of assisting local farmers with haymaking and other work….and several camps for agricultural work in the holidays have been arranged in different parts of Cornwall, where we hope to prove as useful as we did last year.

By the time the boys returned to Clifton

in September, Europe was gripped by

an infl uenza pandemic which appears

to have left the School relatively

unscathed –

The practice of daily spraying probably is responsible for our comparative immunity, a theory which should reconcile us to a continuance of it

- and the German Army was in full

retreat. Rumours of peace at last

abounded:

We publish this number at the beginning of a School year which may well be the most momentous that Clifton has ever known. It will bring us within sight of peace if not peace itself.

Most of the boys now at Clifton had

known nothing other than the School

operating against a background of this

major confl ict:

To us, whose whole thinking life has been passed amid the strain of war, peace seems almost a dream, but we must face the new problems and the new ideals nobly.

Peace

By the time the last edition of The Cliftonian

came out in 1918, the war had, indeed, come to

an end.

Oliver Folds had decided to apply for a

commission in the Tank Corps – he only

found out later that the role of junior

tank offi cers was to walk in front of the

tank guiding it to its target. He merely

recorded the end of the confl ict in his

diary with these words:

November 11th at 11am the armistice was signed. Obviously there was great rejoicing and everyone went mad but there were many gaps in most people’s lives.

Relief tempered with gravitas was

the dominant emotion, one Cliftonian

writing:

34

Peace has come at last, and the load that has weighed so heavily on the School for more than four years has been removed. And looking back on these years of stress, we may claim that the sons of Clifton have borne themselves nobly. At the beginning of the year 1915 it was estimated that 1500 Old Cliftonians were serving. That total at the end of the war was more than doubled. The oldest soldier serving entered the School when it was but one term old; some who are well within the recollection

of many of us have laid down their lives. Even yet it is not possible to count the full toll, and it is probable that the present total of 530 will be increased. “Their name liveth for evermore.”

Relief at the cessation of hostilities was

tempered by the news of the death of

John Percival. For some years Council

had been planning to meet his request

that he should be burried in a vault in

Clifton’s Chapel and Council members

now began to put this in motion to the

evident satisfaction of the School:

he has watched over our destinies faithfully and lovingly, and now that his long life of toil and service has ended the School is profoundly moved by the thought that he has been laid to rest in the Chapel where he inspired so many generations of boys to share his own high ideals and noble principles.

35

As yet the School was still in the dark

as to what great memorial should

appear at Clifton to mark the sacrifi ces

of its former pupils over the past four

years although it was clear to the

pupils that the OC Committee charged

with deciding this had already raised

signifi cant sums, over £8000 having

been collected for Scholarships and war

Exhibitions, and over £20,000 for “other

purposes” of which a lasting physical

reminder was one. Remembering was

high on the list of the many mixed

emotions at the School and was, once

more, refl ected in verse:

PEACE!

Peace! The cry rings throughout the world,The bells repeat their message far and wide,Yet in some lonely hearts there still shall beSorrow and grief for loved ones who have died.

Deeming their lives of little worth,They fought with courage high, nor knew they fear;They died, they gave for us their lives, their all;Their mem’ry shall we ever cherish dear.

No useless coffi n shrouds their bones,No gorgeous monument, for eyes to see,Tells where they lie, save just a wooden cross,Whereon is grav’n the legend – R.I.P.

Not great verse perhaps, but we should

not underestimate the strong feelings

of this generation, young and old, when

the guns stopped. In the silence that

followed, it refl ected on the scale of loss

and on the fact that for many there was

to be no permanent grave to mark their

passing.

And so life at Clifton, as with many other

HMC schools of the time, returned to

some sort of normality. Sport came

back onto the agenda, along with

lectures, concerts and all the pre-war

activities. That this world had in fact

passed, such was the enormity of the

social and economic changes that were

a direct consequence of the confl ict,

had yet to seep into the collective

Clifton consciousness. Casualty lists

continued to appear in the magazine,

solemn reminders of what had been,

as returning Cliftonians succumbed

to wounds. Throughout the war, these

lists had appeared under the heading

“Vitae Prodigi Patriae Profuere”, and a

poem under that title appeared in the

February 1919 edition of the magazine:

O spent with battle, garnered to your rest,It this not bliss?Slain in strange lands and seas, or East or West,Know you of this

Peace won by your blood shed, and lives laid low,Weariness, pain;Grim strife neath wintry skies or tropic glow,Fierce suns, chill rain.

On swamp, dark, burning sand? The world’s black nightYe turned to day,Saluting from afar Dawn’s promised light.And shall we say

“For you there is slight guerdon; ours the gain?”Ah no, for youThe joy of having trod a pathway plain:Your price, your due.

Never in this world or the other canRust or decay!Loud rang the call: “Arise! And play the man!”And so your pay

36

Glory of having followed one clear gleamO’er waters dark:Seeing the right and scorning things that seemThe blind man’s mark.

Taking your cross, foreknowing that earth’s crownWas thorns, wounds death:Yours the strong love no cataract may drown,Nought vanquisheth.And ours the thanks shall grow from year to yearTo you who sleep; But oh, for those who drop for you the tear,For them we weep.

This mixture of guilt and grief, of trying

to make sense of the senseless, merely

refl ected the national mood as the

country struggled to come to terms with

the events of the past fi ve years. For

some, putting these feelings in verse

was one of the only ways they could

come to terms with all of this.

For the next few months, the last of the

casualties were recorded and another

VC. Edward Bellew (OH 1897-1900) had

shown extraordinary courage at the

2nd Battle of Ypres but had then been

captured and he was not repatriated

until 1919. He died in 1961, the sad

postscript to his story being the theft of

his VC from the museum in which it was

housed. It has never been recovered.

The death of Frank Callingham (OH

1913-1916) was, perhaps one of the

saddest of the Clifton fallen:

He received his commission in the Sherwood Foresters in 1917. He died in hospital in London on February 29th as a result of being gassed on the very last day of the war.

In June, the Head Master received a

curious letter from the war Trophies

Committee:

Sir,

I am directed by the War Offi ce Trophies Committee to inform you that, at the wish of the Offi cer commanding 293rd Siege Battery, an Austrian gun has been allocated to Clifton College, for safe care and custody. Will you please inform me whether you are willing to accept this trophy?

Dr King did so and one wonders what

happened to it – one of Clifton’s “urban

myths” is that it was later buried on

the Close.

Commem returned to its pre-war

format in July:

A very large gathering of Old Cliftonians was present, and other visitors, whose number unfortunately had to be limited by the diffi culty of obtaining accommodation in the neighbourhood…..a large number of young soldiers and sailors fresh from active service were particularly welcome on this occasion.

It is almost as if those who had survived

the war needed to come back to their

School to touch base and plug back

into what they had known, and to

draw strength from the College which

stood as it had stood in their youth as

a constant, untouched and unsullied

memory. This combination of the here

and now and the past was encapsulated,

perhaps, by a recital given by Harry

Plunket Greene of The Best School of

All fame; followed by a torchlight tattoo

courtesy of the School’s OTC.

37

The Commem Service continued

the theme of memorial with the

presentation of a “fi nely bound volume”

containing the names of all Cliftonians

who had fallen. The whole concept

of remembrance dominated national

thinking at this time, which was

understandable especially in view of the

fact that for so many mothers, wives

and children there were no tangible

graves to visit in order to express their

grief. The queues which formed to

see the tomb of the Unknown Soldier

in Westminster Abbey and the impact

the building of the Cenotaph had in

Whitehall was clear evidence of how

deeply such grief was imbedded in so

many families of the time. No “closure”

or “grief counselling” available in those

days. The need to keep memories alive

exercised the minds of the War Cabinet

in 1919:

There is a danger that a precedent will be established which in remote years…..might conceivably prove inconvenient and devoid of meaning.

The Bishop of Norwich touched upon

this in his Commem sermon:

You have the list of those who made the supreme sacrifi ce. We shall presently lay it on the altar…..You cannot, you will not, think of them as dead. They live, and not only do they live, but their spirit lives in you….in the years to come you will need jealously to guard this inspiration. It is natural – it is well-nigh inevitable – that a time of reaction, of relaxation of effort, should follow upon a period as strenuous as that which we have been through.

and he concluded by urging the boys to

perpetuate the tradition of service for

which so many Cliftonians had made the

ultimate sacrifi ce:

For you, as for them, the opportunity will come suddenly in some unlooked-for way.

At the end of the year, Council fi nally

decided in favour of the building of a

Memorial Arch on College Road.

38

The Aftermath of War

1919-1922

Evidence from the next two years suggests that the School

rapidly returned to normal with pupils concerning

themselves with such matters as the clock on New Field,

the thorny question of the wearing of top-hats when off campus,

and the growing custom (to be deplored, of course) of clapping at

cricket matches.

Yet two themes emerge which hint

at the growth of a confl ict of culture

between pupil and adult at Clifton.

Several articles complain about the lack

of enthusiasm of pupils over a variety

of issues, and especially in terms of

supporting their sports teams, and

about the tedium imposed upon them by

the OTC and the summer OTC Camps.

This culminated in a poem, set to the

rhythm of The British Grenadier, the

publication of which would have been

unthinkable two or three years ago:

The Clifton College Corps

Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules,But they and others like them ne’er saw parades like these,Of all the OTCs there are there’s never a

one has moreThan that which we all know of the Clifton College Corps.

More verses continue in much the same

mocking vein, and the concluding lines

pulled no punches:

Then let us pluck up courage and make complaint to thoseWho make us carry rifl es and wear these khaki clothes,For since we have all these parades we only hate the moreThat ancient institution, the Clifton College Corps.

38

This, and the views of some Old

Cliftonians complaining about the

shallowness of the times and the fact

that the young of “today” are over-eager

to embrace all things new, echoed the

cultural split in the nation as a whole.

Two very different generations, the one

looking forward and the other looking

back, struggled to come to terms with

post-war Britain. There was predictable

outrage at the publication of this verse

and the editors of the magazine were

compelled to make a public apology

and a recantation of the attitude it

expressed. The genie, however, was

out of the bottle and the uncertainty

that this must have caused for those

in authority equally determined to

remind pupils of the past generation

must have been akin to that faced by

Heads and Housemasters in the 1960s.

Such fragility of confi dence was seen

in a sermon preached to the school by

Canon Wilson in February 1920. The war

had shaken the foundations of English

society to the core – in a sense, it could

be argued that the 20th Century started

not in 1900 but in 1916 – and one of

the many institutions rocked by the

experience of 1914-1918 was the Church

of England. After the Somme and Ypres

in 1918, the “old dispensations” were no

longer enough. Wilson refl ected on this

in his address:

What is God really like? That is paralysing the Church today.

and he continued by trying to make

sense of the whole issue to his young

congregation:

Which of us suspected, a few years ago, that England was so heroic, that your predecessors in these stalls and on these benches were so splendid, as the last years have proved them to be. It was the life of the unseen Spirit of God building up the sense of right in the hearts of many generations that went before them, the result of the prayers and work of some few whose memories still live among us, and of a vast unnumbered host of the unremembered men who here and elsewhere did their duty in obedience to the voice therein. Now your generation is called upon to face a spiritual crisis –

the spiritual rebuilding of Church and State in the faith of a living and ever present God. Quit you like men. Be strong.

This theme was repeated in the Dean

of Gloucester’s address to the School

at Commem in June of the same year.

He talked about how the war had swept

away “all the old human landmarks”

and urged Cliftonians to call upon the

example of those who fell when faced

with the complex problems of a society

facing an uncertain future:

When now and in the days to come you commemorate those who have fallen and think over the many diffi culties that start up as you contemplate the terrible sacrifi ce of young lives, will you also think over the real message of the Book of Job, that God still is behind all human events, and that He will still justify Himself to those who look with real faith to His great working out of the mysteries of life and death?

Towards the end of the year there is a

hint of irritation in the pupil body over

the fact that its views had not been

sought as to what a fi tting War memorial

at the School should be. The die,

however, had been cast at a meeting of

the OC Society in December where it was

agreed that an architect should now be

appointed to consider a range of designs

and make a fi nal recommendation to the

Committee for its approval.

Lack of certainty continued throughout

1921 with the onset of serious industrial

disputes resulting in the threat of

wholesale strikes and deepening chaos

in Germany, Italy and Russia. The Dean of

Wells referred to this at Commem in July,

referring to Cliftonian traditions which

have been greatly enhanced by the splendid record of lives laid down for the country. To your school be true, and England can wish no more…..I confess I am amazed, I dare not say dismayed, at the prospect of what is going to happen to England. The forces which before the war were threatening us have not gone; the problems are not solved. We have yet to face them all over again.

39

40

In Memoriam

By October, Cliftonians were complaining about the length

of time it was taking to build the Memorial Arch, but the

beginning of its construction did, once more, bring the

focus of the School back to the whole question of remembrance

in a more practical way, inspiring a more considered and

technically better poem from a pupil:

In Memoriam

This, to their memory: though the thing they wroughtNo record needs, that human hand can give –Who, with their love, their life, our freedom bought;Who died, that we may live.

Nay, not in marble their memorial lies,But in the spirit, that quickens us within;The hope, that looks, henceforth, with larger eyes;The peace, they warred to win.

But, for our love of them, and that high cause,This portal stands: that ye, who knew them not,May, for a moment, as ye enter, pause,And they – be ne’er forgot.

The summer of 1922 at last saw the

Arch completed:

The coming out of the trees into leaf, which a late Spring long delayed, greatly adds to its presence.

and although The Cliftonian editor was

somewhat critical of the fact that the

building looked isolated during the

winter, and that the names recorded

within were not in columns as on the

Menin Gate, he conceded that

when the letters have been painted the names will stand out more distinctly.

The passage of time has long since

faded the original painted lettering –

perhaps, if the School does nothing else

to mark the centenary of the outbreak

of the Great War, and the part played

in it by Clifton pupils, masters and Old

Cliftonians, restoring the lettering would

be the most appropriate gesture it could

make in their memory.

40

Mem Arch was offi cially opened

on Friday 30 June 1922 as part of

Commemoration weekend. The

proceedings began with a lunch for

seventy in the Council Room given by

Council and presided over by Earl Haig.

The menu was substantial – Salmon,

Chicken, Ham, Ox tongue, Veal and so

forth indicating that pre-war appetites

were much in evidence. At 3pm there

was a procession from the Wilson Tower

to the South African War Memorial.

The School OTC was drawn up on the

Close facing the statue of St George

whilst the rest of the School stood on

the Chapel side of the Quad. Relatives

of those whose names were newly-

inscribed on the walls of the Arch

gathered near the Memorial. The

procession, headed by the Dean of

Gloucester and the Bishop of Newcastle,

then moved towards the Arch and, as

they moved off, the OTC presented arms.

There then followed a short Service.

41

42

Following the Blessing, the procession

returned to the South African Memorial

where fi rst Earl Haig, and then the Head

Master, addressed those still assembled

there. Haig began by talking of the War:

War may let loose the worst passions of human nature, but a war that is just, that is imposed upon a peace-loving nation by the desire to protect and further the safety of the homeland and justice and liberty among the peoples of the Earth, must always call forth the highest qualities of men. It was such a war that these men, old school-fellows of our own, some of them, all of them linked to us by the knowledge that they too loved and lived among these courts and buildings that have become part of our own being – it was in such a war and for such a cause that these gallant Old Cliftonians laid down their lives.

He went on to talk of the qualities

needed to withstand evil, quoting

Francis Bacon – “Number itselfe in

Armies importeth not much where

the People is of weake courage” –

and concluded

Let your actions and thoughts be worthy of the burden you will one day have to bear as citizens.

Little was he or any of his hearers to

know that once again many of them

would be called upon to put these

words into practice in 1939 and that a

similar ceremony would take place on

the same spot on 3 October 1948. Dr

King responded by thanking Earl Haig,

mentioning the signifi cant role that

he had played during the confl ict, and

commending Sir Henry Newbolt for

the noble lines in which he enshrined for us the meaning of the gateway and the names inscribed upon it, as once before he did for the Memorial at which we are now standing

and he concluded by saying that

In the last months we have seen the Memorial gradually rising. As with all Memorials, there have been questionings and doubts as to the form which ours should take. But we here in winter, spring and summer have seen the stones of the gateway set in their place….Day by day in the future the School will pass beneath its arches, day by day they will see the names upon its walls.

The National Anthem was then sung.

The fi nal act was a march past by the

OTC, Haig having moved to a special

platform in front of the School House

garden to take the salute, encouraging

the younger cadets at the rear, who had

fallen out of step, with the words “Don’t

hurry, you are doing very well.”

43

On the Sunday, Canon Wilson preached

the Commem Sermon. Much of this

was devoted to Percival, but he did talk

of remembrance in words which are as

relevant today as they were then:

Our Commemoration this year has been exceptional. It has been the commemoration of former members of the School who fell in the Great War. To us older people their memory is still fresh, and will remain so as long as we live. To the School, with its brief generations, the memory must soon fade as the years go by. But none of you will ever, I hope, lose the impress of what you have seen and heard in the last two days and to the generations to come our memorial gateway will carry some haunting tribute to the past and those who fell.

44

What still echoes down that corridor of

years to any who read the fate of those

young Clifton men during this time is

one constant fact. Every citation, every

record of these young men without fail

mentions the values for which they gave

up their lives. Chief amongst these was

service, built into the College’s DNA

by Percival at its birth and nourished

by subsequent Head Masters, and by

Canon Wilson in particular, so that it

became the default setting of a Clifton

education in the years leading up to the

war. Jeremy Paxman puzzles over the

question as to why so many wounded

young offi cers, such as Sassoon and

Owen, went back time and time again

to the Front in spite of their injuries.

The answer is simple and is seen

in the words written about those

young Cliftonians by their respective

Commanding Offi cers. They did what

they did out of a deeply refi ned and

embedded sense of duty and of service

to others that was enshrined, whatever

the Ben Elton school of history likes to

imply otherwise, in their characters and

consciences. Service, duty, a sense of

obligation to things outside of oneself,

faith in the triumph of what is right and

what is good, stoicism in the face of

threat, disappointment and danger –

these were the values for which these

Cliftonians fought and for which they

died. The quality of such values are as

much needed today as they were then.

If this Centenary Supplement does

nothing else, let it honour and

remember these Clifton men. The

example of the lives they led and the

values they espoused keep alive the

meaning of their sacrifi ce, their gift to

their own and future generations as

long as such things are talked of.

In an age when everyone has an opinion,

and the means of expressing it widely

in public, it is perhaps not surprising

that the marking of this centenary

has caused controversy. Much of this

has been fuelled by the centre-left

twitterati’s determination to emphasise

the present over the past, the argument

being that the problem with British

institutions, of which a historic Public

School such as Clifton is but one, is that

they continue to defi ne themselves by

what they were rather than by what they

have become, an attitude which has no

place in a modern 21st Century state.

Yet if we do not know where we have

been and if we have no comprehension

of the rock from which we have

been hewn, how can we understand

what we are or the journey that has

100 Years On“Time’s ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away.” Here we

now stand, one hundred years later, “remote” indeed from the

events that took place at Clifton, in Europe and across the world

in the decade between 1914 and 1923.

44

been undertaken in order for us all,

individually and collectively, to arrive

at the point at which we now fi nd

ourselves? Whether we like it or not,

we are all part of an ongoing narrative

and whilst we may smile benignly or

click our tongues at the actions of our

predecessors in the earlier chapters

of this narrative, it is precisely these

actions and beliefs that have moulded

us into what we are today. Three

thousand and sixty-three Cliftonians

“From the great Marshal to the last

recruit” served in the Armed Forces

between 1914 and 1918. Five hundred

and sixty-eight laid down their lives. For

those obsessed with League Tables,

this places Clifton 10th out of some

200 Public Schools. Celebrating this

centenary is fatuous, but remembering

it is a clean different thing. By refl ecting

upon those Cliftonians who died, by

restating the timeless values for which

they were prepared to sacrifi ce their

lives, we pick up the torch that they

fl ung behind and make sense of what

they did when we try to continue to

defend those values in our daily lives

both at school and in the life thereafter.

2014 is thus not a time to rejoice but a

time to refl ect, remember and above all

respect those names on Memorial Arch.

Like them, we are called to serve and

we should give thanks that in so doing

it is unlikely that we shall have to pay

such a price.

As we move through life, we begin to

understand that grief is the price we

have to pay for love, but that love and

unselfi shness in the end conquers all.

Full honour or mention cannot be given

in a publication of this sort to all of those

whose names we pass when we enter

the School from College Road; so let the

last word belong to one of them, Charles

Stiebel (PH 1890-1892) who was killed in

action in 1917. In his haversack, a letter

was found addressed to his wife which

he had hoped would never be posted:

I believe that if death should separate us for a while I should always love you. Dear, I believe that the love of God and pure love of one another are one and the same thing. Just as a drop of sea-water is in every way like and part of the great God. I don’t believe people can all of them always feel the love of God, nor does He expect it, but we know that it will grow up one day, and then it will be so beautiful that we cannot even imagine it now. Still, I hope, as you do, that we shall keep our individuality.

Dear, whatever you do if we are parted, don’t despair. It is the devil’s strong weapon which hurls many lives to ruin. If faith fails – that is the faith of the heart and mind – go on living faithfully – that is good enough for God – and the other will come. Now my darling. Give my love to the babies.

Your own lover and husband,

Charlie

“The choicest fl owers are watered with tears.”

45