Art's blog

Marketing Director Ms Amanda Baker of the Duke of York’s is mounting a ‘Now and then’ display in March. It would be a crime not to include CSM Rowson of G Coy, so one hopes she’ll not overlook him, for he was a fine fellow. In his sixties, ancient and overweight I thought when I was under his care as a boy. Yet his deeds were renowned and mighty, and his memory crystal clear when he recounted them to our attentive throng. In the 21st Lancers, he was a 15 year old and served as the CO’s trumpeter during the famous charge of the 21st at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. Trumpeter Rowson sounded the charge on [no, not a trumpet] a bugle and stuck close to the side of his Commanding Officer as ordered. He used his bugle to beat off the Dervishes who came too close and emerged from the reckless charge unscathed, alongside his CO, having ridden at the head of the Lancers through massed Dervishes, hidden in the large declivity until the 21st found them. Check the muster rolls for accuracy. Rowson was there. So was Churchill, but we know all about him, don’t we?

A fellow alumni formerly of military field rank, miffed that a favourite chaplain of his day would not be favoured with a glowing tribute, claims to write on behalf of like-minded old boys a fierce denunciation of the disclosure of child abuse and pedophilia by some past members of staff (see the www.achart.ca website). He complains that his reading left a bad taste in his mouth and in the mouths of others, for what is written does reflect his sentiments or those of his fellows. This refusal to hang dirty linen on the line is typical of the maudlin, mawkish and mushy attitude of some to a revered institution’s ‘good name’. It is the same stubborn and arrogant attitude of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches that have condoned physical and sexual abuse of children through the ages by maintaining a conspiracy of silence. In response, the complainant was advised that where irrefutable evidence is available from two or more verifiable sources of disgusting and brutal behaviour towards children under care that information will be published.

An unusual yet welcome spectacle of a Ms Drum Major at the annual Trooping of the Colours ceremony at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School, Dover. A nimble enough Ms to handle the mace that proved, however, too heavy to toss. How much war paint the young ms applied is not known, but she appears to have marred the dignity of the drum major’s office with an excess of lipstick. tut! tut!
Photo credit: Ted Beck

Dan Kirwan, for many years the oldest Dukie known as the ‘father of Dukies’ died at Totowa, New Jersey, on 19th May 2010. Dan is survived by his daughter Patricia Demkwicz, who said that ‘Pa was trying to make it to 21st August, which would have been his 97th birthday.’ Dan emigrated to the United States of America and, during the Second World War, enlisted in the U.S. Army where he was soon promoted to the rank of Technical Sergeant and, because of his Dukie experience, spent the entire war years training enlisted men saluting and parade ground drill. Following the war, Dan spent his entire working life in the employ of the U.S. railways. He was an avid correspondent and contributed numerous memoirs to the School website. Dan’s older brother, Pat Kirwan (1906-1994), was also a Dukie, who entered the School in 1916. Pat was commissioned and survived Dunkirk. Michael Ridlington (Wy 1851-1961) reports having met Pat Kirwan at Colchester in 1973 where he was still teaching at MCTC. Stories of the Kirwan brothers appear on the www.achart.ca site.

An interesting back water of Dukie history is the number of alumni who have, ‘of their own consent’, to use a phrase of our founding fathers, or otherwise, have become enmeshed in intelligence operations to one degree or another. Some are well enough known by their valour to be publicly recognised while others have shunned the light and remain yet unsung in the shadows. In the former class, one may recognize Colonel Nigel Wylde (C 1956-1966), recipient of the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his work when commanding the Belfast Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit in 1974. He exposed the now well-known ‘transatlantic aircraft terror plot’ as a fraudulent deception on the part of the police and intelligence community; the idea that the plotters could sit in an aircraft loo and mix liquids to produce bombs to blow up aircraft was ludicrous. Not for this, but for allegedly providing secret information to a journalist, the Queen’s gallant Wylde was charged under Section Five of the Secrets Act. Almost two years later, however, the charges were dropped.

Nigel Wylde is not the only one among us to become enmeshed in the barbed wire entanglement with which the intelligence pasture is riddled. One, whose name is withheld for security reasons, became a part-time agent for Mossad in exchange for funded religious studies in Jerusalem, then fell out with his masters for their treatment of Palestinian prisoners. Yet another, a Sandhurst graduate, served his time in communications intelligence, and another, an Oxford University graduate, joined MI5. Even your devoted blogger had a brush with the intelligence community, enough to wonder if that is not a phrase of contradictory meaning.

When writing the biography Sir Percy Sillitoe (1973), former head of MI5, the department asked the publisher W.H. Allen & Co. to submit the ms for review. A Canadian lawyer friend, now an Ontario judge, held the opinion MI5 should take a hike. Within a week, MI5’s Canadian friends, the RCMP (CSIS was not yet then in existence) had the telephone tapped. [At the time, telephone taps ‘clicked’ in following connection, and so it remained for many months.]

Many thanks for your excellent website; it has provided me with a major breakthrough for my Family History. My g-g-grandmother, Mary Ann Lomax, entered the RMA in 1827 aged 5 years and left in 1836 at age 14, being apprenticed to McConnell’s Cotton Mill in Cressbrook, Derbyshire. She left after 7 years on completing her apprenticeship, receiving the 5 guineas given to those who completed the course. Her father, Cpl Henry Lumax of the 4th Light Dragoons, married Ann’s mother, also Ann. He might or might not have been Irish, but his wife Ann was and they probably met when the 4th Dragoons were stationed in the vicinity of Carlow, Ireland. The regiment shipped to India in December 1821 and arrived in Bombay in May 1822. Their daughter Mary Ann was born during the voyage on 4 January 1822. Henry Lomax died in India, which is why Ann’s mother was fortunate in getting her daughter admitted to the RMA.

Hilary Davidson

Jim Dove (Wn 1941-45), a member of the NZ Veterans Association, via the NZ High Commission, was invited to lay a wreath at the Kempsey, New South Wales, Australia, on the occasion of the town’s 2010 ANZAC day. ANZAC Day in New Zealand and Australia, held annually on 25th April, is the equivalent of Armistice Day in the U.K. Kempsey had never had a NZ representative attend its annual ANZAC Day to explain the part NZ played in ANZAC. Jim Dove being the registered NZ veteran with 150 km of Kempsey, the 2010 ceremony was the first time a NZ vet had attended to represent the occasion outside Sydney, so fellow Dukies extend their congratulations to Jim Dove for stepping into the breach. (See the Dukies index for ANZAC Dukie to read Jim’s story.)

For the duration of the World War 1 (1914-1918) the Duke of York’s School, relocated from Chelsea, London, to Dover, Kent, in 1909, was evacuated to Hutton, near Brentwood, Essex. The evacuation provided the military authorities with a transit point for troops moving to and from the Western Front. The Dukies buried in the graveyard of All Saints’ Church, Hutton, died of various ailments while the School was in its HUtton wartime quarters. The memorial to the four Dukies was erected by the Old Boys Association in 2006; rather later in the day, of course, but in dutiful memory of the four boys buried in the All Saints’ graveyard.

Art

29 April 2010: Your address was passed to me in my pursuit of a query I have about a memorial to children of the Duke of York’s School buried in All Saints’ churchyard, Hutton, Brentwood, Essex, and the memorial erected in 2006 by the Old Boys Association (whom I have been unable to contact). I and a walking companion were intrigued because the memorial lists 4 boys aged variously 10, 11 12 and 13 who died at Hutton at different dates between 1917 and 1919. Why Hutton, why just these 4 boys and how did they come to die there and be commemorated. The new memorial is over an older grave site which looks big enough to have taken all four. I’d be grateful for any information you can throw on the matter.

Judy

25 April 2010: I enjoyed the “Culture’ piece – it makes the whole history site more what I believe history to be: a series of views of our past, often competing, that are taken out, dusted off and examined openly and honestly from time to time. Well done! Funnily enough, I took my youngest son to his new school recently here in Darwin and met a young woman – another parent – with whom I got chatting. It turns out she was from near Dover and I mentioned that I’d been to school at DYRMS. She was flabbergasted, because her father and uncle had gone there. She was even more astonished when I said I had known them both. As we got to talking, she admitted that she hadn’t seen her father since she was a young girl because of his brutal and grotesque conduct towards her mother. I said both brothers had been notorious as bullies, which didn’t surprise her in the least. They were in fact the boys I was thinking of when I wrote about Roberts – the younger brother was the one who kept trying to drown me in the pool. It brought home to me the six degrees of separation theory.

Darwin