Chris Kerr (FS 58-62) writes:

“I have just had a look at the swimming team photo in the latest e-bulletin and can offer some comments on this.

Firstly, the chap on the right of the back row is called Godber (not Godbev). I'm pretty sure he was on FS with me.

The chap on the back row - Thompson - was also known to me.  I think he was on FN  and  I recall that at the beginning of the summer holidays one year he was more of a splasher than a swimmer but that by the end of that holiday he had turned himself into a fantastic swimmer who went on to break most of the school records.  He was also quite a formidable wing forward, playing on the first XV with Scrapper Dixon et al. (Incidentally, see the new 1971 Lions tour book for Peter Dixon's quotes on that record tour.) When he left school Thompson joined the RAF but I learned from the Bulletin that he had been killed.  Many years later I was walking on Abersoch beach with a chap I'd just met called Andy, the latest boyfriend of a friend, who it appeared had been in the RAF with Thompson.  They were in the same squadron and Andy told me that they were flying Hunters somewhere in the Middle East together doing target practice at flags on top of sand dunes. The squadron would peel off one at a time and dive towards the sand dunes trying to shoot the flag targets. The first few missed the target but on his turn, Thompson was determined to score, which he did, but could not pull up and flew into the sand dune under the target. The squadron routine was that the following plane filmed the one in front for later analysis and I was stunned to learn that Andy had been right behind Thompson and had filmed his fatal crash. Regrettably, Andy was also killed later in the RAF when the Harrier in which he was taking off developed a fault causing him to eject. The nose of his aircraft was pointing skywards as he ejected at very low altitude and Andy was tragically ejected horizontally into the side of a hangar. All this came flooding back to me when seeing the photograph in the Bulletin.

I also remember the school glider referred to elsewhere. Being in the RAF section (along with Thompson) I 'flew' in it - or at least that was what we called a low hop across the crease on CCF day. I recall Air Vice Marshall Sir Augustus Walker (an Old Boy) coming to review the troops one year and asking to have a go in the glider. He instructed us to remove the spoilers (large planks of wood fixed to the leading edges of the wings to slow the thing down) and he then ordered the bungee pullers to walk (two elastic bungee cords were hooked to the front end each with a team of pullers and, on the command, they separated in a V and both sides walked away until a wooden ball reached a stop indicating the maximum permissible stretch). We walked very enthusiastically and did not hear the stop command but learnt that the ball had pinged off as the bungee passed maximum permitted stretch. This event went down in folklore mainly because the pilot only had one arm and had to reach across himself and then down to the release cord by which time the puller teams were heading towards the squash courts! The glider took off and the general consensus was that it reached an altitude similar to the tops of the rugby posts, then flew a record breaking distance followed by a crash landing. Not a word of criticism was heard from the pilot, who earned the undying admiration of his pullers. ('Gus' Walker had lost an arm during the war in heroic circumstances - Ed).

I hope my ramblings are reasonably accurate and that these memories might encourage other OSBs to contribute their own.”

 

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