Roll of Honour 2023

F OREWORD (9)

OSE, while still choosing the Army as the main service in which to serve, now also joined the Air Services and to a lesser extent the Royal and Merchant Navies. However, the Merchant Navy carried with it the greatest attrition rate of the war. In the end the RAF/RAFVR was to be the service for which St. Edward’s would be best recognised post war. Once again the ‘Chronicle’ proved a reliable source of information throughout, edited by the Reverend Leslie Styler, though he was hampered by much stricter censorship rules that hadn’t been in place in The Great War. The School magazine often included very effusive character testimonials of those killed, usually very soon after the event which possibly make rather extravagant reading today; written probably by the Housemasters involved, Kendall himself, or Styler (who was also a Chaplain) all of whom would have known the individual personally and been highly affected by the loss of such a young life. Again, searches have been made for greater explanation of where and how OSE losses occurred, especially air crashes which seemed common, even over the British Isles and needed greater explanation; some have been resolved, others remain annoyingly puzzling. Once again, the ‘No Known Grave’ syndrome crops up frequently, quite often for bomber crews which took off from their home bases in the United Kingdom and were never seen again. Since the majority of the OSE lost in the R.A.F./R.A.F.V.R. were in Bomber Command, this research is important and on-going. It was truly a world war with OSE lost in the Far East, Italy, the Desert War, Dunkirk, Malta and all the central actions in Europe. C OMMEMORATING OSE LOST IN W ORLD W AR T WO As early as February 1943, the School Governors were meeting and considering what form any WW2 War Memorial might take once peace returned. In July 1944 a four page leaflet appeared in the ‘Chronicle’, detailing the plan arrived at by the Governors and ‘the Executive Committee of the St. Edward’s School Society’ which consisted of: • An Aspinall Wall, behind the existing Calvary, on which names of those who have given their lives would be recorded. • Grants to enable the sons of OSE killed or incapacitated in the War to be educated at the School. • A Library and, if funds permitted, a Speech Hall, to form part a new building, which would stand within the School as a constant reminder of the sacrifice in war made by sons of the School (This was at first envisaged as a major rebuild of the existing Big School).