The WWII Years at Aymestrey School

The active side of the war seemed pretty far away; though Dan Asterley and his Home Guard platoon practiced small arms firing in the wood below the front lawn, and one evening we watched with interest as Colonel Ogden cleaned his revolver just below our dormitory window.  This changed briefly during a morning class when a German bomber flew across the lawn below treetop level (you could see the pilot and rear gunner clearly) to drop two bombs on the Meco works in Worcester (Thursday, 3 October 1940) before going home.  Other aircraft were mostly Tiger Moth biplanes with trainee pilots learning to do loops and stalls”.
Lt Col A V Claydon (1940-44)

Wood cutting for heating, which had been a long standing tradition at Aymestrey School, was of extreme importance during the war.  The Easter 1942 magazine reported with pride “that the School has not had to buy any ordinary household coal for 18 months, and that period includes two exceptionally hard winters”. 

Many Old Boys served in the Armed Forces.

The Roll of Honour has 9 names on it:

_

George Norman Bevan
Edward Sydney John Brazier
Edward Nigel Bunting
John Henry Charles Clerke-Brown
Richard Anthony Dewing
John Dennington Farrar
Gordon Malcom Lock
Peter Arthur Matthews
George Alistair Thompson

_ C Clerke Brown, having initially been reported as missing, was confirmed to have died of his wounds in June 1940. 
His driver said:
(Easter 1941 magazine)

_He never asked any of us to do anything he was not ready to do himself, and he’d often get out and do things we’d have been glad and proud to do for him.  If all the officers here is like him, we’ll be all right.

Oliver Philpot (1925-1927) was one of the three escapers from the Stalag Luft III German POW camp through the tunnel they had dug under the vaulting horse, in the successful escape known as ‘The Wooden Horse’.  He posed as a margarine executive from Norway and travelled to freedom on his own, while the other two escapers travelled together. 

During the war there was an air-raid shelter in the cellar.   Exeat Sundays were abandoned, as was the Old Boys cricket match – rain caused the first one after the end of the war (1946) to be replaced by a ping-pong match, an impromptu concert and sing-song.  Scout camps continued.