Anecdote 1: Here is some background to some of the photos:

Photo 1 - July 44: One evening, earlier that Summer, some of us were out in the garden, just about where this photo was later taken. Britain was on 'Double British Summer Time' (DBST). About 9.00 PM we heard a loud droning overhead.

When we looked up we saw numbers of dark-brown painted DC-3s with unusual white triple-striped wing markings, fuselage rings, and white 5-point stars, towing gliders with the same markings. They flew very slow and so low you could see people in the cockpits. We thought they must be on a practice exercise. It was still broad daylight.

The next morning the BBC wireless announced that General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force had issued an Official Statement to the effect that Allied Forces had landed in France.

Of course that was June 6th, 1944; I later realised that the Airborne Forces we had seen on the evening of June 5th had just taken-off from Tarrant Rushton Aerodrome, near Blandford, on their way to the Cherbourg Peninsula.

In films depicting D-Day I was confused for years by their makers’ assumption that the Airborne Forces took-off at night. I eventually realised that the film-makers were focused on the night-arrival plans, and on the German and French records using a European time. We would have been in bed and missed a stunning sight but for DBST.

Later in June, when I went back home to Weymouth for our monthly week-end, I could see from the train that from Weymouth Avenue in Dorchester, all the way into Weymouth there was a continuous traffic-jam of Lorries, Half-Tracks, Tanks, and Jeeps. On the farm-land near Maiden Castle (Pete Lewendon later married into one of their families) the vehicles were diverted through a canvas mock-up-entrance into a shallow pond to verify that they could fit into the LCTs that came right up onto Weymouth Sands after D-Day, unloading the wounded and Ambulances, and reloading replacements.

Our house in Weymouth was on the Esplanade and the traffic jam continued-on past our house to the sands for months; the house had been a haven for the young, often 18-year-old, GIs of the American 1st Division (my posting to Southfields was probably part of a domestic deck-clearing). My older sister worked at Weymouth & District Hospital, and was sweet on a young 1st Division sergeant.

At the beginning of June the GIs suddenly stopped coming into town, which abruptly became deserted. They had been confined to Camp for their D-Day-assignment briefing - Omaha Beach (see the film 'Saving Private Ryan' - as bad as the first 20 minutes of the latter was, we always thought the real thing was worse; we knew what must be done to the enemy if they tried to invade our beaches - Churchill had already told us Our Duty in 1940: 'We shall fight on the beaches...'. Even we little English boys, then-7-year-olds, had taken these duties to heart.)

My sister’s boy-friend, against all orders, had left Camp to come into Weymouth and say goodbye to her. The Field-Police came and arrested him. The CID, who wouldn’t themselves have known what was specifically up, took my sister in for questioning at their HQ on Dorchester Road at Carlton Road North. They decided she knew nothing and released her. Her boy-friend was summarily demoted to 'Buck-Private' and sent-in on the first waves to Omaha Beach on D-Day. He later got a field-commission.

In photo 2 - November 1944 - all the above is written in the invisible Balloon-Over-My-Head, together with the Normandy break-out, the aborted attempt on Hitler’s life, Rommel’s suicide, the Allies’ relief of Paris, and the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem (the 'Bridge Too Far').

The Battle of the Bulge, where my sister’s newly promoted 2nd Lieutenant was killed, was yet to come before 1944 was over.

The strongest feeling I recall from those war-time days is of the whole country being united to a single purpose; every thing you did, said, or felt, was set against compliance with that purpose - winning the war.

The slightest hint of complaint e.g. not eating everything that was put in front of you, was followed by the rhetorical question: 'Don’t you know there’s a war on?!', reinforced by reference to starving millions in Asia.

This made us feel guilty and did reinforce our resolve always to help the war-effort and never to hinder it.

When the Atomic Bombs were dropped in August 1945, and after 6 years, the war was finally over, our dominant feeling at home was that now my two elder brothers, who had survived the Naval war in the Atlantic would not be sent to die in the Pacific. We never felt a moment’s regret for dropping the Atomic Bombs, and never have.

Anecdote 2: A Common-Room Window Puzzle - solved 42 years later.

On the East side of the common room there was a high window, with an inside sill you could sit on. It looked-out onto the garden. I think it is visible in Photo 1 - July 44 above, behind [Boosey] Cleary. Anyway, one winter evening in early 1945, between our evening meal and Prep., I was sitting on that sill day-dreaming. Just as four centuries of predecessors had the impulse to carve their initials on the school’s Spanish Galleon Wall, I idly, and invisibly, traced my initials - IC - on the window. Prep. started, I prepped, and went to bed.

That night there was a frost and when we came down for breakfast, there, throbbingly on the window, highlighted by surrounding condensation, were my initials - "IC". I instantly knew that I would be punished, and I was. I was made to clean the window and to learn by heart a Psalm, probably picked for me by Pompey, to be correctly recited that evening. I discharged the punishment and the matter ended.

What is the puzzle? I occasionally pondered it over the years but didn’t solve it until 1987, 42 years later. How did I know, immediately, that I had committed an offence instantly punishable at Southfields? What words describe the underlying philosophy?

Fast-forward to 1987. I now worked at the Chicago Hospital on which the fictional American TV series 'ER' is based. (My story is that George Clooney’s character is my son!) This was a hospital with 400 Attending Physicians ('Consultants' in British parlance) and 400 resident medical staff (House Staff in British parlance). I was then President of the Hospital Medical Staff. Every day I had to deal with Lawyers on various medical staff issues: Credentials; Operating Room privileges; Negligence; Peer Review; Appointment; Reappointment; Licensure; and dozens of other medical administrative matters. (Behind the scenes in the real 'ER' there is a hive of such activity. Doctors behaving in the dramatic 'ER' way would soon find themselves in Medical Siberia; of course that would make the fictional 'ER' too boring to watch).

I found that the thought-processes of Lawyers on these various issues were quite different from those of Physicians like myself. I needed to learn how to think like a lawyer, so I signed-up at a local Law School, and went part-time for the next four years, during which time my wife narrowly lost-out to Mother Theresa for sainthood. By day I performed my medical duties, and by night I attended law school, answering my on-call duties as necessary.

So I learned to think like a Lawyer, and found the very simple answer to my Southfields puzzle:
American legal philosophy: 'All conduct that is not explicitly forbidden, is permitted, and is not punishable'.
Southfields legal philosophy: 'All conduct that is not explicitly permitted is forbidden and is instantly punishable'.

Q.E.D.

In spite of Ian Carr’s comments on Southfield legal philosophy, we enjoyed quite a lot of liberty, rather more than might have been expected from someone who had previously been head of an Approved School. During my latter years, I used to slip away some evenings after prep for assignations with a young lady from the ‘Green School’. On my way there and back I had to pass the window of WL’s study but, although he must have seen me many times, he never once mentioned it. One evening I got back late and after dark to find all the outside doors locked. Consequently I had to climb the fire escape shown in one of the photos [from the drive to the first floor, shown on the left of photo no. 1 in the 'Undated' Section of the Lancashire Collection] to get into my dormitory through the window. Its other occupants had obviously been forewarned of this intrusion, creating a rumpus and shouting ‘burglar’ and ‘thief’. Fortunately, although his bedroom was next to my dormitory, WL also had a deaf ear and said nothing about it.