Lives Remembered Christopher Wenban (MO 1943-48) Richard Christopher Wenban died on 25 August 2023, aged 94. His sons, Michael (MO/TR 1972-77) and Mark (TR 1975-79), have chosen to share an extract from ‘My Life’, the memoir Christopher wrote during his retirement.
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n january 1943 I went to The King’s School, Canterbury at which both my father and his younger brother, Uncle Ted, had themselves been educated. The entire school had been evacuated to Cornwall to the Carlyon Bay Hotel, near St. Austell, together with other pupils from Canterbury. Most of the teaching staff had left for the war and so we combined with St. Edmund’s School, Canterbury, evacuated at the same time as ourselves, under Headmaster Canon FJ Shirley. Somewhat ironically, the area subsequently suffered bombing from the Luftwaffe. I always considered myself fortunate to have
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been posted to Meister Omers under JB Harris. I remember getting involved in Rugby, Athletics, even Hockey. I had two seasons with the First XV. I also was pretty fast as a sprinter and my best time for the 100 yards was 10.3 seconds. Apart from Maths, my favourite subject was History, and I was quite upset that I had to choose for further school progress between History, and Maths and Science. So it was group IV Maths and Physics and Chemistry, with English as a subsidiary from then on. From this I gained a place at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge to study Mechanical Engineering. Between School and Cambridge I did National Service with the Royal Corps of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME). When we were practising grenade throwing with four or seven second fusing, he amazed us all by throwing his grenade vertically upwards. On another occasion we were in line firing Sten sub-machine guns at targets on the range. Someone spoke to him, and he turned round still keeping his finger on the trigger. How was it that no one was injured…? OKS
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Spring 2025