The Abingdonian 2019

19 www.abingdon.org.uk Michaelmas Term Abingdonian recorded: ‘Some excellent photographs were taken of the four crews at the Boathouse’. The school archives have two of them. It was some time later, when I was looking at it again, that I realised that of the 21 people in the photograph only 11 of them survived the war. Every one of them served in the armed forces; Williams, Burkett, Cooke, Woods, Cullen, Davenport, Lupton and Baker were killed and Eason died of appendicitis. By way of a postscript to this: Chaning-Pearce’s brother, a doctor in the RAMC, was killed in October 1917, and his son, Paul, a twenty-one- year-old sergeant in the RAF, was killed in action over North Africa in 1942. All this detective work was some time ago. However, in March 2018 Keith Hoult of Strike Films approached me for help with a short documentary he wanted to make on the successes of the Boat Club over the past 100 years for a Wicker’s World Foundation course that he was about to begin. Soon realising that it would be difficult to cram the successes of the Boat Club into a short documentary, we wondered whether the First World War might produce a topic, and this photograph immediately sprang to mind. For it to have the greatest impact we restricted the film to the crew of the 1st boat, three of whom died in the war, and to the master-in-charge of rowing, who was also killed. Alan Eason was the first of the crew to die. He hadn’t left school until the summer of 1915 when he was just 18. He immediately took a commission in the Royal Berkshire Regiment but died in January 1916 following an operation for appendicitis. Frank Lupton, a second lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers, was killed on 4 August 1916 leading his platoon into action on the Somme. Sidney Harold Baker, having initially been told in 1914 that at 34 he was too old for active service, eventually got a commission in the Gloucestershire Regiment and was killed in action on 23 March 1918 when his position was overrun by the Germans on the third day of their Spring Offensive. Arthur Davenport, like Eason, didn’t leave school until the summer of 1915. He served originally with the Rifle Brigade and then transferred to the Tank Corps. He was killed when his tank was captured by the Germans on 23 August 1918. Some years ago I was sent a photograph of Davenport and his seven- man tank crew. The men are wearing shorts because it got very hot inside a tank, and they are all carrying revolvers because there was not enough room for their rifles and they needed something to be able to defend themselves with should the tank break down or be captured. But the most striking thing about the photograph is the expression on Davenport’s face. The fresh-faced young man who captained the 1915 1st XI has the blank, unfocused, ‘thousand yard stare’ of a person who has detached himself from his surroundings, the stare of a person suffering from battle fatigue and shell shock. Sarah Wearne 4 March 1914, Abingdon’s 1st IV in the river, the 2nd IV against the bank Abingdon School Boat Club cap Arthur Davenport (centre) No. 9 Section 11th Battalion Tank Corps