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Winbury School Days 1956 to 1958 by Gary Miller |
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There I was standing beside my parents as they talked to Mr. John Spicer, the Headmaster at Winbury, on a typical winter day, shivering from the damp and cold dressed in an English school uniform. The culture shock was overwhelming! Just 30 days before I was in Norfolk, Virginia in the good old U.S. of A warm in my bed, with my friends, playing basketball. My father, Capt. Floyd E. Miller USN, had been assigned to a “Secret Base” in England. All very hush-hush. Little known to me, at the time, the U.S. Navy and the U.S Air Force had commandeered a Mansion near Taplow (The Hedsor House) and were digesting information taken from U-2 Spy aircraft as they flew over the USSR. The information was being used to target nuclear strikes, if required, for the Strategic Air Command bombers, missiles and the Navy’s submarines. There I was smack in the middle of the Cold War. I had been uprooted and there I was now in Maidenhead. Having feared I would be sent to a British boarding school and after pleading with my parents I had been enrolled at Winbury as a day student. Thank God. The only other American, John Gephardt, was about my age and his father a USAF officer was also stationed at the “ Secret Base”. John and I became instant good friends … the Yanks against the Limeys. I was assigned to Howard House, which was like a platoon of boys. Most classes were in the old wooden buildings in the yard across from the main house. That winter I got use to the Spartan reality of a typical British school. No heat coupled with fear of capital punishment if you did not tow the line. The academics were well over my head … the curriculum being substantially different than American schools. Second year French, Latin, British history, math and sorting out how to deal with Pounds, Shillings and Pence, etc. were the order of the day. What I knew about Latin was absolutely nothing. The British not the Romans invaded America. Yet I was thrown in with second and third year students like I knew what they knew. Talk about being fed with a fire hose. Let’s educate this Yank was the name of the game. All very interesting this survival of the fittest mentality; but I discovered a few years later that this education served me well when I attended a prep school for the U.S. Naval Academy outside Annapolis, Maryland. We lived outside of Hurley over by Marlow in a house by the name of La Pergola and my father – not in uniform, but dressed as a bloke – trucked me into Maidenhead every day on his way to the “Secret Base,” in a Ford Zephyr. After I became acclimatized to the cold, minimal heat in the houses, (and no heat at Winbury!) the food (boiled cabbage and bangers plus rhubarb) the academics (that were over my head) and the strange language (English spoken by the English, so different from American English) and the pounds, shillings and pence system, things started to look up a bit. I was used to playing Baseball and American football at home but eventually, playing Cricket, Football and Rugger became my favorite activities. Out of the classroom and onto the field, that’s what I lived for! When I wasn’t doing sports I was over at Miss Lemon’s, just across the Maidenhead Bridge, riding horses. Every Wednesday and on the weekends she would hold court and I was being instructed in the finer points of how to ride and jump English. Apparently no one in Maidenhead had ever seen an American Western saddle. It was pure joy with the wind in my face riding down bridle trails at a cantor, jumping logs. A great way to satisfy my need for speed. On the academic side, Mr. Bradley, the professor of History among other things, became my idol. A stout no-nonsense man dressed in a threadbare Harris tweed jacket with patches on the elbows and sheepskin RAF flight boots on his feet in the winter. I always presumed and fantasized that he was a RAF flyer during WWII. He would enter the class with books under his arm and a slipper (tennis shoe) size 13, perched on top of the books. All very academic. I remember on more than one occasion when one of my unfortunate classmates was invited to the front of the class to assume the position as the size 13 was employed to quell a disturbance in the back of the room. In this regard, as for myself, on another occasion I was invited to meet Mr. Spicer up in his office. Beforehand I did have the sense to remember to put a few sheets of heavy blotting paper down my pants. He asked me a few questions, most of which I had no knowledge of, before I assumed the position and felt the crank and sting of his cane a few times. Thank God for blotting paper. When we lived at Cookham I would often ride the train over to Maidenhead with Jonathan Flowers to attend Winbury. I was an avid train spotter and would linger at the train station to catch a glimpse of King George V or Pembroke Castle rumble through the station rocking on the rails with black smoke as they poured on the coals. After a year I had picked up a pretty good British accent and was often used by my mother to go antiquing. The merchants would often sell to an English school boy with a Winbury jacket far cheaper than to an American. When I was Director of the 8th Air Force Museum outside Savannah, Georgia (http://mightyeighth.org/) I made several trips to England to visit the Imperial War Museum at Duxford and the RAF Museum at Hendon, plus the old airfields in East Anglia. In East Anglia all you had to do was say you were a USAF aviator, had flown with the 8th and the doors flew open and the pints flowed. The hospitality was always first class. They still remember clearly the Yanks and the British/American partnership and heritage of WWII. As I sit at my desk now in Lincoln, New Mexico USA with British and American flags on my desk, my thoughts often drift back to Maidenhead, Marlow, Cookham and my fond memories and those happy days at Winbury with the Brits. I still have that blue blazer with the pink ribbon packed away in some box with a cricket ball next to it. All reminders of yesteryear and memories at Winbury. GARY
MILLER
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