Remembrance Sunday 2025 – address by Lt Col Martin Myers-Allen

To mark Remembrance Day we though we would share the address Lt Col Martin Myers-Allen (Hon OF & VP) gave in the College Chapel on Remembrance Sunday.  Martin credits much of the content to the archives and especially Leslie Gillett’s very wonderful, old book, ‘Remembered Days’.

Remembrance Service Address

Framlingham College – 9 November 2025

This is my 36th Remembrance Service at the College. My 30th as the Contingent Commander.

Over the years, I’ve heard remarkable stories—stories of valor, sacrifice, and endurance—from distinguished servicemen and women.

Today, though, I speak to you from a different perspective, as a schoolmaster….and tell you about what was it like… to be a pupil at the College during the Second World War? A pupil studying here, 9 decades ago, whilst their brothers, fathers, uncles and Old Framlinghamians fought in far away lands.

In the autumn term of 1939 war was upon us, yet again, and pupils returned to a school cloaked in darkness.  Blackout curtains covered the windows and tape crisscrossed the panes of glass. Dim 25-watt bulbs lit the corridors. Rather exotically, the lavatories had been painted orange—and fitted with blue lightbulbs.

The physics master offered an explanation…but it was met with considerable scepticism.

As a war measure, to assist the domestic staff, boys were called upon to make their own beds in the morning and clean their own boots.  Some games lessons were sacrificed for working the land and the second XV rugby pitch was plowed up to grow vegetables.

Four splinter-proof air raid shelters had been built.  They were dark. Mud-floored. Uninviting.  Drills were regular.  Pupils scrambled to assemble in their shelters—pulling gas masks from brown cardboard boxes. Before the shelters advice had simply been: “Run. Hide in the countryside.”  Even with the shelters, safety was far from certain, not so bomb proof, they were thought of as inadequate and decommissioned.

So during red alerts, pupils left their dormitories and were ordered instead to lay flat on the flagstones in the main corridor …not thinking too much about the tons of Victorian masonry above their heads that could fall upon them.

To keep the boys occupied the contingent commander and a group of boys helped build a concrete pill box, and it’s still there on the Badingham Road. In a field opposite the entrance to Framlingham Football Club.

Andrew Currie recalls a WWI  zig-zag trench was dug by a group of burly sixth formers by the fir tree at the front of school. Quite what use it was escaped everyone.

One morning, breakfast—porridge, bread and jam (if there was any)—was interrupted by a low-flying aircraft.  Machine guns blazing.  Instead of ducking for cover, the boys ran to the statue of Albert and scrambled up it…it was allowed those days…….from that vantage point they saw one of our fighters chasing an escaped barrage balloon. They never get it and it eventually became snarled up in a tree on somewhere on Station Road.

Later, a fleeing German bomber—identified by the boys who used to regularly sit atop of Albert to spot planes – they declared it a JU 88 and it is written thus in the archives. The town, though, suggested it was actually a Heinkell 111,— it dropped 8 sticks of bombs.  One fell on a house on College Road, killing Miss Harvey, a primary teacher at Sir Robert Hitcham’s Elementary School.

Most fell in the school playground and some damaged the almshouses. Peter Simpson, on his way back to school, heard the first bombs go off and ran 20 yards, ducked behind a house as explosions sent debris raining down. He was injured but narrowly escaped death.

Four townsfolk were to die during war, two more  from a canister of incendiary bombs that fell in Albert Road and one near the castle by a mortar.

Even during public exams, the war was ever-present.  A V-1 doodlebug, a flying bomb, exploded near the old swimming pool in the copse.
Pupils dived under their desks. Inkwells spilled. Chaos followed.  And yes… some boys probably took the opportunity to cheat before the exam was restarted.

B-17 American Flying Fortresses, Mustangs, and Thunderbolts belonging to the US 390th Bomber Group were stationed at Parham Airfield. The airmen would visit the College to play rugby or cricket and the boys would cycle to Parham to see the airplanes and ask for ration packs.

When I was first here, I remember an annual dinner night.  A previous Sgt Major and I would invite the surviving airman back to stay. They had a quiz every year identifying sound of aircraft engines played on a cassette.  Fewer and fewer came back over time.

Back to the boys and the war years. Planes from Parham flew over the castle—using it as a navigational marker for their final approach run. Often damaged. The noise of a struggling flying fortress was a somber sound. Sometimes releasing flares to signal that wounded were on board.

In 1940, the threat of invasion felt imminent. The coast, 12 miles away, was seen as a likely landing site. Fears reduced the number of boarders to just 142 as parents removed their sons. In June, after Dunkirk and the fall of France, the governors acted. The summer term was shortened—ending June 25th. Pupils were told to make their own way to Repton School in Derbyshire by August 6th and fees were set at £1.50 a week…..and no VAT. Apart from the day boys, always in the minority, they remained at the College with rather an ad hoc syllabus.

Fewer than 100 boarders assembled in Derby. Their arrival carried a touch of glamour. Goodbye, Mr Chips had just been filmed there, starring Robert Donat…….it should have been Michael Cooke. But behind the scenes, there were serious concerns. The Ministry of Defence had considered requisitioning Framlingham College’s buildings and there were questions about the financial viability of the College.

Life at Repton was quiet. Uneventful, but they were allowed into town and with this newfound mobility – prefects mounted expeditions to the surrounding countryside where shrapnel, cartridge case and incendiary bomb fins could be retrieved and stored in tuck boxes. Ivor Webb suggested that the main differences between Fram and Repton was that at Repton there were more classes, but not so much noise and certainly not so much sport.

Five weeks later the threat faded, or the economic fortunes of the school improved (we will never know the full story) and the boys trickled back to Suffolk. Peter and Mick Simpson returned too—and having spent the summer with the Home Guard – bringing with them bicycles…black, with a dim light on the front  and whit patch on the rear wheel guard,  they also had rifles that they were allowed to be kept by their side in case they were called up for duty.

Nights passed quietly and were largely uneventful.  At 10.00pm the boys would religiously kneel by their beds to pray for 10 minutes, before opening the blackout blinds and windows and going to bed. But boys in Stradbroke often stayed up and watched the red glow on the horizon—a grim reminder of Norwich under bombardment.

In the winter of 1941, it was so cold the Mere froze over. Hockey was played… on ice.

Stradbroke boys built a one-valve radio to tune into the BBC World Service.  An aerial wire ran from a tree at the front, earthed with a skewer—and inside, down to the radiator. It was manned constantly and prefects had runners to disseminate the information.  During a cross-country run, Steeps, the boys found the wreckage of an American plane.
They took souvenirs—live ammunition belts, bomb sights. The police were called and the boys were all lined up with their tuck boxes. Lockers, pockets and tuck boxes were searched…..and tea chests full of contraband were discovered and taken away.  But they didn’t find the 0.5 ammunition, which the boys used to make homemade fireworks.

On a trip to play Norwich School, the coach driver heard gunfire. He stopped the coach.  The boys hurled themselves into a ditch… until the German aircraft passed overhead.

Gradually, some sense of normality seemed to return.  But food remained rationed. Sugar was kept in screw-top jars with the owner’s name. Butter was apportioned strictly. Owning a jar of jam…….well jam was a status symbol.

On the evening of Monday, May 7th, 1945, it was whispered during prep: “Victory tomorrow. Two days off!”  The boys had heard it on the one valve radio—at 7:40 p.m.  One boy, overcome with excitement, opened a window in the classroom block—where French is taught today—and shimmied down the drainpipe in celebration. The queue for the College’s one public telephone was enormous.  One boy climbed the main building and positioned a chamber pot on top of the flag pole.  The whole school were assembled soon after and witnessed a master take aim with a 303 and without further ado smashed to smithereens with his first shot…..to rapturous applause. For two days, many boys joined the crowds celebrating at the funfair by Framlingham Castle. Some managed to get home.

Chris Seddon was only 8 ½ and remembers waiting for his father, a former head boy, who was on leave from Egypt and coming to Speech Day.  He didn’t know if he was going to be in uniform or in civilian clothes. He hadn’t seen him for 4 years and was so afraid that he would not recognize him.  But of course he did…….

No pupils lost their lives. But among Framlingham’s sons—the Old Framlinghamians—the price was great.

85 of them…that we know….who once sat in the very pews you sit in today.  I wonder if their spirits sit with here us today.  Their deaths were announced in Chapel… or posted on the noticeboard outside Chapel doors, commission by the late Tony Martin’s father, next to the games noticeboard. These notices came with fearful regularity and were read, cap in hand, with somber dignity.

To honour those who gave their lives in both World Wars, we have two memorials  at the back of this Chapel.  And one which is our very own Brandeston Hall which I have had the honor of being the Headmaster for…twice. In 1947, the Society of Old Framlinghamians purchased Brandeston Hall as a living war memorial. Let us hope and pray, as we move from a post-war footing to a pre-war footing, that we never, ever, have need of a third war memorial.

So let us remember those on the memorials on the West wall, all of them, forever….

And let us remember them not only in two minutes of silence — but in our stories, to keep their memories alive.  Like in Norman Porter’s new book, Homage to Heroes…you should buy one. And let us remember them…..

In laughter.
In bravery.
In youth.

And in the lives we continue to live—freely…… because they gave theirs.

Amen