instinctive faith in Fred proved well placed. Once the units were in place, who cared what a sinuous labyrinth of pipework lay behind? As a schoolmaster and a man there have been few like Fred. Most of the younger generation will remember him at the head of one of the country’s best CCFs. It was voluntary under Fred, and the alternative was to go home, yet a couple of hundred Berkhamstedians preferred to march round the Gravel Quad in near total darkness and in the sleet and the rain. It was never more successful when it was compulsory. The officers, as Mike Thum once said, had little in common and belonged to different jigsaw puzzles, yet fitted together seamlessly. What united them all, recruits, NCOs and officers alike, was loyalty to and affection for Fred. The whole thing was barely comprehensible. As his friend, nothing has given me greater pleasure than to see him centre stage at his swansong, squeezed for virtually the last
time into his uniform, as fine a figure of a man as there ever was, presiding over the formalities of the visit to the School of Her Majesty the Queen to celebrate not only the 475th anniversary of the School, but also the 125th of the Corps. In his heyday Fred was a giant, but the need to complete our pension contributions sees us all go on slightly longer than we would wish. The Queen’s visit saw the great man go out at the moment of his own choosing and at the peak of his powers. Let no one tell you otherwise! Dick Mowbray (Hon)
Trevor Lines Trevor Lines first joined the School as a teacher of English in the former Middle School in 1987. With over 30 years of service he has participated in all the nooks and crannies of school life. As an English teacher his sonorous Scottish burr, a deep love of The Old Berkhamstedian 2018 | 95