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OPUS • Issue 6 • Spring 2012
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
In memoriam Dr Nigel Jonathan LINDSEY (1956 – 2012)
W P (‘Bill’) MAIN (1926 – 2012)
We are indebted to Nigel’s widow Julia for this appreciation of his life
Bill attended PGS from 1936-1943 and after leaving school joined the Royal Navy. He then went on to pursue a career with IBM and spent time in both the UK and Australia, eventually settling in Australia where he became a regular and popular attendee at the Sydney OP Luncheon Meetings.
On leaving PGS Nigel Lindsey (OP 1964 – 1974) studied Zoology at Bangor University. His career took him via a PhD from Sheffield University to a lectureship at the University of Bradford where he became Professor of (was awarded a chair in) Life Science Education in 2009. In 2010 He became the University’s Director of Learning and Teaching and held a particular interest in equality and in developing new methods of teaching and delivering learning. Nigel’s time with the PGS Wildlife Club (he was a founder member) inspired a life long love of nature and birds in particular. He travelled the world to satisfy his love of nature and jointly authored a checklist of birds of the orient. Nigel kept in contact with PGS and in 2008 attended the Wildlife Reunion. Despite a three year battle with Motor Neurone Disease he was always determined to live his life on his terms and not let his illness dictate to him and continued to work until he died. He is survived by his wife, Julia, and two young children.
Peter M G PERROW (1920 – 2011) Peter attended PGS from 1930 – 1939. He was the son of a naval officer and came to PGS from King’s School, Rochester in January 1930. In 1938 he and three other pupils went on a 240 mile cycling tour of Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. Peter kindly donated an account of the trip to the PGS Archive along with his PGS caps. Peter was a protégé of Colonel Willis in 214 Battery and then joined the 57th Wessex Regiment RA immediately from school, shortly before the outbreak of war, serving from 1939-46 in N. Africa and Italy. After being de-mobbed he enjoyed a career with Fisons as their Crop Surveying Manager.
Dennis John (‘Paddy’) SMITH (1924 – 2011) We are indebted to Paddy’s son, Dr Simon J Smith OP (1969-1979), for this tribute to his father written from his home in Canada
Nigel Lindsey (front) at PGS Wildlife Club Reunion, Oct. 2008.
Christopher LOGUE CBE (1926 – 2011) Poet, playwright, screen-writer and actor Christopher Logue, died on 2 December 2011, aged 85 years. Please see John Sadden’s article on pages 45 - 47 for a celebration of Logue’s life and career.
Miss Ascough’s Academy (where he was “very intelligent for his age”) and then Lyndhurst Road School, he won a scholarship to PGS and started there in 1936. His contemporaries included John Rutter, James Clavell and Alan Bristow. By all accounts he enjoyed school life: he excelled at sports and was in the Soccer 1st XI. He spent many leisure hours with friends out in a boat fishing off Southsea.
Paddy was born in North End in Portsmouth – christened Dennis John – but immediately adopted the name familiar to everyone thanks to an Irish midwife. After early years at
He was evacuated with the school to Bournemouth and continued studies there. He used to cycle home to Portsmouth at weekends, and although evacuated, the war was not far off – while with a crew potato digging on a farm in Lymington one summer he had to scatter under machine-gun fire from a stray German fighter. In 1943 he left PGS to enter Oxford under the Naval “Y” scheme. This meant starting the first six months of a degree course – in this case English Literature at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford where he was lectured by the likes of C.S. Lewis, J.R. R. Tolkein and Edmund Blunden and had Lord David Cecil as a tutor. Weeks were split between academic studies and naval training in the university boat house. In his words, he learnt one kind of Anglo-Saxon from the professors and quite another kind from the naval instructors. Academic and naval exams were followed by sea training on T.S. Foudroyant and then a tour at the shore base H.M.S. Ganges where they took a three month course in six weeks. He became captain of the shooting team and came top in gunnery, near the top in seamanship, knots and splices and drill. He was assigned to the starboard gun on the cruiser H.M.S Norfolk as an Ordinary Seaman and left from Gourock in November 1943 for Scapa Flow for trials and then to Iceland as escort on the Russian Convoys. The Arctic Convoys
called for extreme physical endurance as duties included aircraft watch in the crow’s nest at full speed into a headwind, loading 25 kg shells into the guns and chipping ice off the deck at -30°C in the Arctic darkness. On the return from Murmansk, before Christmas, the Norfolk located and exchanged fire with the German pocket battleship Scharnhorst which had set sail from Norway, and after both sustained damage, the Norfolk gave chase and joined a larger fleet for a two-hour battle which sank the Scharnhorst on Boxing Day. After accepting his naval commission, Paddy served on motor torpedo boats out of Dover up to and after D-Day. On his first day the Commanding Officer told him to be ready to go out on “banger” that night – which largely involved crossing the channel and drawing fire from German guns to allow convoys to pass safely. He saw action on D-Day as part of a decoy landing at Calais – in his words, out in a small boat in the dark with a gramophone player and a huge loud speaker playing sounds of anchors dropping, tannoy commands and landing craft engines revving. After D-Day, Paddy was promoted to sub-lieutenant and moved to a base at Taranto on the Adriatic coast of Italy to participate in action among the coastal islands of Yugoslavia, serving as navigator again on motor-torpedo boats. Action involved harassment of enemy supply lines and support to the Partisans fighting in the islands and mainland as well as minesweeping over a wide area. One story concerns a visit to a harbour in Gozo, neighbour island to Malta, where a stray mine threatened to drift into the harbour causing widespread destruction. Paddy shot the mine at a safe distance and saved the town, and as a consequence was
awarded the Freedom of the Island of Gozo. Other experiences were of making silent approaches to shore with muffled oars to drop off agents, only to be met by shouting and cheering Partisans. The crew apparently joined in the cheers in support of Tito though provided their own words which fortunately for them were not translated. Another involved using tennis balls from a nearby factory to re-float a sunken ship in the harbour at Zara (now Zadar). The posting in Italy continued with a promotion until well after VE-Day with mine clearing duties up and down the coast. He kept in touch with some of his fellow officers for the rest of his life. Paddy was demobbed in 1947 and came home just in time for the severest of winters. He had a strong interest to pursue studies in science and was not keen to resume the course in English which he had started at Oxford. He joined the Peoples’ Dispensary for Sick Animals as a Technical Officer and travelled the country supporting operations at its various hospitals for several years. He met his wifeto-be through this work he and Alison married in 1952. They lived in Horndean initially, and he continued with PDSA on the mobile dispensary serving local towns. They bought a house in Cowplain in 1957, where he lived for the rest of his life. He played cricket on the OP team for many years. Paddy trained as a teacher at Portsmouth Training College just as their son Simon arrived in the early 1960s and then taught at Barncroft School in Leigh Park, moving to become Deputy Head of Petersfield Junior School in 1969 where he stayed until retirement in 1989. He established a strong reputation for science teaching, particularly biology, and was highly respected by pupils and staff. Wood carving and creation of sculptures in other media had been a leisure activity for many years. Homes and gardens of friends and relatives are graced with woodcarvings of birds, mammals and even modelled heads. In retirement, Paddy added painting to his considerable skills, joining the Artspace group in Portsmouth and exhibiting frequently. He was a frequent visitor to his son in Canada for many years and travelled extensively in North America.
Late in life, Paddy expanded his connection with the Grammar School – talking about his wartime experiences for an oral history project and participating in the reunion of 1930s-40s leavers in 2008 which he enjoyed very much. The Development Office had even arranged a surprise birthday cake for him. One of his last dealings with PGS was to ask school archivist John Sadden for some help with research and so pleased was he with John’s assistance that he sent gift tokens to the school so that John and the Development Office could treat themselves to ‘some posh biscuits for their coffee break.’ He remained active right up to his death from heart complications – painting prolifically and supporting the campaign for official recognition of service in the Arctic Convoys. He was buried at the Sustainability Centre at Leydene, near East Meon in a plot he chose for himself, on a hillside where he once went shooting with his father.
Duncan Hugh SPENCER (1920 – 2011) Duncan attended PGS from 1933 to 1939 and passed away peacefully on 4th September 2011 aged 91 years. He always followed the progress of PGS with keen interest.
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