Author: Craig Martin

Being I enrolled at Winbury in September 1953, nine years old, and would be in 1st and 2nd forms, I think, one of a handful of American military brats at the school. By that time, we had been in England for two years, but had always attended American schools on the various airbases to which my father was assigned. In the summer of 1953, however, he was posted to a small detachment at Hedsor House (now a well-known wedding and meeting location, I understand), in Taplow, and we rented a house in Dorney Reach, right across the street from Victor Climo, and I assume that was the reason my parents chose Winbury. I would walk across the road to Vic's house in the morning, and we would ride to his father's television and radio shop in Maidenhead, near the Cinema. After school, we'd either walk back to Vic's Dad's shop, or take the bus, or even go down to the Thames and walk our way home along the bank.

The first few months were a bit daunting, on several levels. I was well behind my English schoolmates in most subjects, I had an accent and short hair, and I didn't really understand all the rules and conventions. The first week, for example, I thought we were to tip our cap to all adults, not just parents, and spent days frantically saluting utter strangers on the streets, until some kind soul finally sorted me out. I also had to learn to dip my pen in an inkpot to write my lessons, with almost perpetual ink stains on my fingers. Discipline was also much more strict: we had one master, an RFC veteran from WWI, who could identify an unseen plane overhead just by the sound of its engine. Anyway, he carried a cloth bag containing an old plimsole, with which I became intimately acquainted after whispering in class. That seemed fair, however, and I still liked him, but there was a younger French master with a mustache who was fond of slapping faces, sometimes from behind at lunch…. didn't care for him much. I remember Quinton-Barber, and a master named Rowe, who taught mathematics, had a wonderful singing voice, and was a demon rugby player, but who died at an early age, I understand.

The first year, I wore shorts to school, and I remember one bitterly cold winter day when we were all shivering away our morning recess: the cook took pity on us and distributed baked potatos, which we juggled from hand to hand until they were safe to squeeze open and devour. I'm sure we had other things to eat, but the only school lunch I can recall was a thin meat gruel poured over a boiled potato. Other recess activities: racing Dinky race cars -mine was an Alfa Romeo- down a short slope at the base of a tree near a classroom, and playing "conkers" with horse chestnuts, which we would pierce and thread through a string, and then try to smash a rival's dangling prize (soaking them in vinegar to harden them was considered bad form, but I may have experimented…). When rain prevented normal athletics, we would sometimes push our desks aside and have one-round boxing matches, with no great harm done to anyone, as I can recall.

A very politically incorrect memory is of an evening school musical gala, when those of us with banjos and talent played, and the rest of us -me included- put on blackface and rhythmically bobbed up and down from behind a screen to amuse the assembled parents. Occasional evening pea-soup fogs. The Schoolboy's Own Exhibition in London. Hillary and Tenzing climbing Everest. Train-spotting at Taplow Station, hoping for a glimpse of an exotic streamlined diesel engine on its trials. Cocooned Comet I airliners behind a Heathrow hanger. Running through the streets to light a Guy Fawkes bonfire. Christmas puddings and treacle. Learning semaphore during Scouting, and calling Mr. Spicer "Akela." Annoying the fare collector on the bus by paying her in farthings. Sweet shops. Diana Dors' Cadillac convertible parked in Maidenhead (I had Vic's assurance on this point… or should it be points?)

My second year, I donned long pants, and had sufficiently grasped the fundamentals of cricket, football, and rugby to participate at an acceptable level. My bowling was quite fast, I recall, but so inaccurate that my approach run was viewed with considerable alarm by the batter, the wicket keeper, the umpire, and most of the fielders (upon returning to the States, my cricket habits initially led me to carry the softball bat to first base, earning abuse from players and coach alike). In football, my only talent was a kind of inspired clumsiness, and I became a defender with the task of colliding, tripping, or otherwise interfering with an approaching opponent. One afternoon, Vic and I were clattering our way in our boots and kit down to the Maidenhead bus station for a match, and someone yelled "Arsenal!," which I found curiously pleasing at the time….

We returned to the States in late summer of 1955, and dozens of people lined our little street to wave us off; my mother cried. I still have my Winbury blazer, cap, and other memorabilia. As I write this in June 2014, I am a week away from my first visit to Britain in nearly 60 years, and feel both anticipation and apprehension. My two years at Winbury and in and around Maidenhead were wonderful, and I have been an Anglophile ever since, but I worry a bit about how much will have changed when I return, or have vanished, or have been forgotten. I'm sorry I'll miss this year's reunion, but if I can find any old photographs from my school days, I'll pass them on. Cheers and best wishes.- Craig Martin, Naples, Florida

Craig Martin, Naples, Florida