Roll of Honour 2023

F OREWORD (8)

An estimated 1627 OSE, teachers, non-teaching staff would take part in WW2. Included would be 1600 OSE and 13 teachers. 79 of these OSE would see service in both the World Wars, and 68 would experience some or nearly all the war as Prisoners of War, including in Colditz Castle. 152 OSE and 1 teacher were killed in action or otherwise died in service. Breaking the OSE number down by service: - Service OSE ROH Army 1023 67 Navy (Royal) 230 13 Navy (Merchant) 6 3 Marines 22 4 Air Services 285 56 Allied Forces 14 4 Others 20 5 Totals 1600 152 The oldest OSE lost was Allen Bathurst (Roll 346) who was killed in London during the Blitz on the night of 11 th May 1941, aged 76, and the youngest was Cadet Colin Murray just under 18 years old with the Merchant Navy killed, when his vessel RMS ‘Domala’ was sunk by Heinkel bombers in March 1940 near Southampton. He has no known grave. While there were some comparisons to be made with the School’s experience in The Great War, many things had changed both internally and externally. St Edward’s was now physically bigger, both in terms of the number of pupils and infrastructure. The sixth Warden Henry Kendall had taken over from his Great War counterpart William Ferguson in 1925, and very quickly had ramped up all areas of the School’s expansion and prospects with a mixture of unbounded energy, drive, barrels of charm when and where required, mixed with a steely ‘Old-School no-nonsense approach’ based on a determination to allow nothing to stand in the way of what he saw as progress. Not everyone’s role model, his personal relationship with the boys and staff was as close as it was two-way. Even during the war years, the number of pupils at the School was growing (361 in September 1940 - 417 in the same term in 1945). The new war was obviously no longer going to be largely fought out in fixed positions in trenches, with poisoned gas and endless artillery and minuscule advances, but now on a much broader scale with the use of air, sea and land technological power never dreamed of in 1914-18.