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Clayesmore - The Second World War Researched and Remembered
Gordon Chubb
In November 1985, the OC Society held a special celebration to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the War. Some seventy OCs were present for a Remembrance Day Service at which the late Rev. David Walser gave a moving address. Members of the wartime staff were present and after a buffet lunch in the Drawing Room they regaled us with their reminiscences of how Clayesmore came through those difficult years. Later we gathered around the lily pond for a photograph with Carl Verrinder, Peter Burke, Evelyn King, John Appleby and David Spinney to the fore.
Some nine years later the Society entrusted a small group of wartime pupils (Sam Salisbury, Henry Teed and myself) with the task of making appropriate arrangements for celebrating the 50th anniversary in May 1995. We settled on a display of archival material in the library, a buffet and a reminiscence session in the afternoon. All this was to follow a special service in the Chapel to be conducted by OC and former Naval Chaplain, the Rev. John Parsons (1940-45). In short, we went for a tested formula. However, on this occasion the school went one better and arranged a supper on the Saturday evening, followed by “Music from the Wartime Years’ by the superb Clayesmore Concert Band under their Director, Tony Waller. These talented musicians had just returned from Christchurch, where they had entertained the public as part of the VE Day celebrations. They gave a sparkling performance!
Many OCs responded to our appeal for historical material, particularly their wartime experiences. Tony Chew, Head of History and School Archivist, arranged a most interesting display of photographs, military equipment and other memorabilia which occupied a large part of the library. The Dorset County Museum rewarded my visit to Dorchester by supplying additional material about Dorset at war. I traced local historians in Blandford and Child Okeford and the veterans of the Royal Artillery Searchlight Batteries still meeting in the County and interrogated various friendly OCs about their wartime memories and exploits.
The morning of Sunday 14th May dawned bright and sunny and Clayesmore and
the surrounding countryside was looking at it’s most beautiful as we filed into a
packed Chapel for Sung Eucharist. John Elderkin OC (1938-43), Chairman of the School
Council, read out the names of the 46 former pupils who gave their lives in the Second
World War or subsequently on National Service. It was also a time to give thanks for the
staff who so loyally served the school and who are sadly no longer with us.
My star turn to launch the reminiscence session was to have been Jim Mackie
(1927-35).Unfortunately he fell ill on the day, so Kenneth Fisher (1930-38), a fellow
pupil from South America (Argentina, as opposed to Mackie’s rivalling Brazil) kindly
stepped in at short notice and disputed most of the facts given to me by his old
class-mate! Undaunted I pressed on with a brief resume of the events following Lex’s
death at Northwood in 1930 and the way in which Evelyn King had assembled the pre-war
staff at Iwerne via Craigend. At this point I was able to bring in Hon. OC and friend and
mentor to staff and students alike, George Dobie.
George told us how he came to be employed by Evelyn King at Craigend and later moved with the staff and thirty boys to Iwerne in 1935. He also revealed how Evelyn King strengthened the school by buying up useful property from Victoria College, Westbury and taking on former pupils of that school, including David Walser, who was to play several important roles in the life of the school in years to come. Another sale sometime before the war began enabled Clayesmore to acquire the entire equipment of the Weymouth College OTC. In one fell swoop Clayesmore had its own Corps! George arranged the transport and, with the back seat of Evelyn Kings’s Rolls Royce removed, he shuttled back and forth, entirely unescorted, collecting puttees, stiff caps, uniforms and other supplies. A minor collision caused by an inattentive farmer near Winterbourne Whitechurch brought police to the scene. According to George the expression on their faces when they looked into the back of the Rolls and beheld forty to fifty .303 rifles was something to be remembered. George joined the RAF in 1940 and was busy servicing aircraft around the world until he was demobbed and returned to the school in 1945.
Evelyn King himself joined the army in 1940 and his place as acting headmaster was taken by Sir Frank Fletcher, a former headmaster of Marlborough and Charterhouse. Sir Frank stayed for only a short while and John Appleby then held the post until Evelyn King returned early in 1942.
The dire emergency caused by Dunkirk and the Fall of France in June 1940 was recalled by Lionel Pimm (1938-41). He had joined the 6th Form at Clayesmore directly from St. John’s, Leatherhead where he had held the rank of Lance Corporal in their OTC. His vast experience in matters military made him a natural choice to lead the nascent Clayesmore JTC and by 1940 was its Company Sergeant Major! One Sunday morning he, Alan Wilson and Gordon Huntley took it upon themselves to respond to Anthony Eden’s call for young men to join the Local Defence Volunteers (later the Home Guard). Having registered at Fontmell Magna they cheerfully free-wheeled back to Iwerne on the one bike they had between them. Before reaching the school gates they were unlucky enough to be apprehended by an officious car borne Superintendent, apparently operating an early version of zero tolerance policing. The result was a conviction and a fine by the Blandford magistrates and blanket coverage of these loyal law breakers by the local press.
Pimm described how patrols were mounted by the Home Guard (in which he himself held equal sway) at strategic points after nightfall. When not potting at rabbits, their principal delight was to hold up and search officers of the Regular Army (pace TV’s Dad’s Army) as they made their nightly rounds of the searchlight units spread about Dorset and other counties. Edward Ardizzone OC (1913-18), the famous war artist and illustrator, recorded one such in a painting entitled ‘We are held-up by ferocious Home Guards’, which is amongst his work on display at the Imperial War Museum.
The extreme annoyance of Regular officers at the antics of the Home Guard was recalled for us by Sam Samways of Ferndown, the Hon. Secretary of the Dorset branch of the 2nd Searchlight Regiment RA Association, whom I had invited to attend and explain to us how Iwerne and other searchlight units passed their time. It appears that these small groups of a dozen or so men were themselves the subject of unwelcome attention by the Home Guard. This arose through the selection of their modest encampments as targets to be captured by Home Guards on exercises or initiative tests; success being denoted by marking the huts with large white crosses, preferably without being challenged by the troops inside! When this happened the men on the lights hurriedly had to remove all traces of the crosses before their inspecting officers, already distraught at the indignities piled upon them en route by local irregulars, could vent their spleens on the poor unfortunate soldiery for allowing such wicked desecration of Government property........
An interesting item in the historical exhibition by Mr and Mrs E. Haines of Child Okeford revealed the hitherto unknown existence during the war of a secret hide in the woods below Hambledon Hill from which guerrilla fighters might harass a German Army of occupation. Henry Teed (1942-47) supplemented this information with a description of the Sturminster Newton Auxiliary Unit hide. This was discovered by some schoolboys who unwisely released their finds of tear gas on their way to school in Sherborne. Not unnaturally this led to enquiries by the Police who thereby learnt secrets hitherto unknown to them about military facilities on their patch.
One more secret to see the light of day that afternoon was the revelation that in 1946 and unbeknown to the staff at the time, three intrepid members of the JTC, Bob Homan, Michael Turner and Ernie Whybrow, all of whom had joined the school during the war, decided that Clayesmore’s efforts should not go unremarked by the nation. Taking advantage of a special holiday exeat they hitch-hiked their way to London. There, in battledress and forage caps and sporting ‘CLAYESMORE’ shoulder flashes, they casually fell in behind the Malta contingent assembling in Hyde Park for the great Victory March of June 8th. Explaining, quite truthfully, to curious stewards that they had become detached from their unit they completed the whole of the exhausting route north and south of the Thames. Their reward was to have the privilege of giving a smart ‘Eyes Left’ to the Royal Dais in the Mall which, in addition to the Royal Family, held, as records show, the Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Winston Churchill, the Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King and General Smuts. A brave effort by three individualists on a parade where everyone else was in lines of twelve abreast!
Many other amusing snippets were gleaned during this session and thanks are due to those who sportingly took part or who sent in other anecdotes or details of their wartime experiences. Material for the school archives is always welcome by Tony Chew at Devine House, Iwerne.
Finally, a verbatim transcript of the reminiscences has been prepared and
is available from me. I have added other papers of interest about the war including
material excluded by time that afternoon. If any OC would like a copy of my
‘monograph’ please send a cheque for £5 (payable to ‘H.G. CHUBB’) to
cover costs and postage - any surplus goes to the Centenary Appeal. Please allow 28 days
for delivery.
Address: 32, Oatlands Drive, Weybridge, Surrey KT13 9JL
Tel: 01932 220634.