Month: March 2019

March 28th 1919

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February 4th 1919 – Admiral Tyrwhitt joins us in a school photograph.

As we come to the end of term, we can look back on the pleasure of meeting up again in peacetime with many of our Old Boys. We were particularly honoured by the visit of Rear-Admiral Reginald Tyrwhitt (who took the surrender of the German submarines).

It has been an especial pleasure to receive visits from those Old Dragons who contributed letters and articles to the Draconian during the war years. What a rich tapestry they have woven for us:

Roger Mott (writing of his archeological find),  Robin Laffan (on the difficulty of being understood by the Serbs), Walter Moberly (who wrote so movingly on the death of Hugh Sidgwick), Leslie Grundy (one of the first British soldiers to enter Lille last year), Maurice Jacks (who used Shakespeare to defeat the censor), Treffry Thompson (dealing with shirkers on a medical board at Cowley), Jack Gamlen (critic at our Shakespeare plays), Donald Hardman (recent winner of the DFC), Pat Campbell (on his experiences at Ypres), Donald Innes (who gave us the Despatch Riders’ Prayer), Pat Duff (who wrote about the evacuation of the Gallipoli peninsula), Tyrrell Brooks (who was so supportive of ‘Thomas Atkins’), and Geoffrey Rose (who recorded the battle in which Walter Moberly won his DSO).

How glad we were to see them all back at their old school after such years!

Many have told me that their deepest impression is the revelation of the supreme worth of a British Tommy. This seems to have formed a bond between classes which must in the end wipe out many class distinctions.

March 18th 1919

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Commander John Bywater-Ward (RN)

Yesterday’s edition of the Times brought news of the death of Jack Bywater-Ward, at his home at Shanklin on the Isle of Wight, on March 14th.

During the War he served in the North Sea, where he contracted consumption. Continued ill health forced him into retirement last July.

Jack trained for the navy on HMS Britannia, becoming a Midshipman in 1898, aged 16. He subsequently served on HMS Canopus (1907-9) and was on the staff of HMS Excellent (Portsmouth Gunnery School) as Senior Staff Lieut.  From 1912-17 he served on HMS Ajax, and was awarded the Russian Order of St. Anne, 3rd class, “with swords” for distinguished service during the Battle of Jutland.

HMS Ajax’s forward guns.

In 1917 he was back at HMS Excellent as a Commander, instructing on the Long Gunnery Course Gunnery on Whale Island, Portsmouth, where he was also credited with four inventions that were accepted by the Admiralty.

Jack’s father died in 1898, but he is survived by his mother (who lives here in Oxford), his wife and eight-year-old daughter.

He will be buried on the Isle, at St Helen’s Churchyard, St Helens.

March 12th 1919

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Sub-Lieut. Percy Trevelyan (RN)

It is now four months since the Armistice was signed and we assumed that those who had served their country so faithfully were to be spared. However, the influenza and associated illnesses are proving just as deadly.

Percy Trevelyan, who had been assigned to HMS Sable in December, died of bronchial pneumonia at his home on Marston Ferry Road in Oxford on March 10th, aged just 19.

He only spent a year at the OPS (1909-10), being ordered by his doctor to go to a school with a different climate, but we all grew very fond of him and his bright, happy disposition during the short time he was with us.

He entered the Navy by way of the Royal Naval Colleges at Osborne and Dartmouth.

At Jutland, Percy (then a 16 year old midshipman) was in the thick of the fighting, being on the battleship HMS Malaya, which sustained more casualties than any other battleship that day.

He then served in the Dover Patrol for about nine months on the patrol boat HMS P 50, when it was commanded by another Old Dragon, Lieut. Desmond Stride (RN).

Percy lost his mother in 1903 and his older brother Wilfred, who served with the Rifle Brigade, died at Ypres in May 1915 after barely a month at the Front.

His body is to be interred in the family plot alongside his mother at Wolvercote Cemetery.

 

March 2nd 1919

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2nd Lieut. Charles Bowyer Highmore (MGC)

Our losses to the effects of war continue to mount. Acute pneumonia, following an attack of influenza, has claimed the life of Bokins Highmore. 

He had been so severely wounded in the stomach by a machine-gun at Monchy on June 28th 1917 that he was invalided from the service last year. He had only just bought a practice at Dorchester, where he died on February 26th.

At the OPS, Bokins was a most merry, lovable boy, full of the best sort of boyish mischief, with the kindest heart for his fellows and for all sorts of animals. He went on to Charterhouse in 1900 and thereafter he became a solicitor.

Bokins joined up in January 1916 as a Private in the Artists’ Rifles, before being commissioned into the MGC and going over to France in April 1917.