Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 158

W ORLD W AR II

S T . E DWARD ’ S S CHOOL , O XFORD R OLL OF H ONOUR

Name ERIC JOHN HOPKINS DIXON (Sub Lt)

Lef SES 1934

Roll Number 2479 Died 20:04:1941

Set / House C

Arrive SES 1929

Where OVER THE TRIPOLI COAST Serving with FLEET AIR ARM, R.N.V.R.

Age 26

Buried No Known Grave Remembered

Naval Lee-On-Solent War Memorial, The Queen Elizabeth Grammar School memorial, Wakefield, Yorkshire and The St. Edward’s School WW2 Memorial

Born 1915 in Hexham, Northumberland of a Yorkshire family, he had a very eminent School career both scholastically and in the sporting arena. Always known as ‘Budge’. He was an Exhibitioner, a School Prefect, an accomplished musician (an Organ Scholar) and above all one of the most accomplished cricketers ever produced by the School. Some of his School cricket records still stand. He was a member of the School’s Cricket XI 1932-5 (Captain in his final year) and formed one of the most successful opening batting pairs ever in the School’s history with A.M. Reid. Both shared in several joint century partnerships and individual centuries of their own. Capt of Squash and Athletics. Hockey XI 1935.Sgt Major OTC.In 1935 he was editor of the ‘Chronicle’, and in his final editorial he wrote a soliloquy ‘Those I have loved’ which after his death Warden Henry Kendall held up as a fine a tribute any boy could pay to his former School. In the History VIth. On leaving he went up to Christ Church Oxford 1935-9, gaining three Cricket Blues and playing county cricket for Northamptonshire. In 1940 he joined the Fleet Air Arm attached to HMS ‘Formidable’, being Mentioned in Dispatches (posthumously) in 1941. He was killed in action when his aircraft was shot down by enemy aircraft off the coast of Tripoli in April 1941 while on patrol. ‘During his six years at SES he never altered in character or lost his simplicity of outlook, The years brought increasing success and responsibility, at the organ, on the cricket field, as a Prefect, but these things left him unchanged and he still got from life, laughter and beauty of friends’ (Chronicle).