Tim de Gruyther (G 61-66) writes:

“I read in the newsletter last year about the playing of the Last Post (Lights Out) from Grindal. There was a gap in the time-line that I could fill, in that it was I who played from 1961 to 1966 from the fire escape upstairs. When I arrived at the school it was Steve Lees, who played it on the french horn from a study window. It was a very wobbly sound, and played at ground level did not travel well. I quickly took over and played on the silver bugle for the next five years. In 1961 the school orchestral band was of a poor standard and I went to a couple of rehearsals, held those days in the cricket pavillion. I had been inspired by the Barrow-in-Furness ACF (King’s Own) drum and bugle band, and it was not long before I had unearthed a box of battered copper bugles in the armoury and persuaded the CO to send them to Boosey & Hawkes to be undented and made playable, in return for volunteering to form a band. I re-roped the side and tenor drums and asked for volunteers. I had a queue of peers who would rather do this, if they had to, than first aid or signals or fieldcraft or anything that required energy. It would have been in 1962 that the first corps of drums performed for the general inspection and later, on Old Boys’ Day outside the Memorial Hall. The standard wasn’t fantastic, but it was a more solid sound than its thin orchestral predecessor. I believe that the Corps of Drums continued for some years after I left in 1966. There was nothing innovative about this new band as all the kit was existing from a previous era, so the Crease had obviously been tramped on years before by bugle boys now long gone. Hey ho.”