Dr Gordon Walsh

Gordon emailed in March 2022 following a visit to the School with his daughters Ali and Heather. He was kind enough to write down some of his memories of his time at Malton Grammar School 1936 - 1942, and a little of his life after leaving school.

I was living in Leavening at the time, and came on the bus in the winter, and by bike in the summer – it was six miles. The bus left Leavening at 8am, and school started at 9am. The afternoon was a little more tricky as the bus left at 4.30pm from the market place, exactly the same time as school finished. So we all left a little early. My mother packed sandwiches for lunch. But in winter we would go to the refectory where we could get a cooked lunch.

The headmaster Mr Williams was my favourite teacher. His full name was Thomas Arthur Williams, and he was known as TAW. He taught Physics and a bit of Mathematics. He was a brilliant teacher.

I also liked Bruce Rolls (we called him Sos), who was very well known around Malton as he played cricket for Malton. He taught Sports, PE, and English. We studied Twelfth Night with him, and he used to type out sheets of explanations and comments; we had to underline passages in the text which we then had to learn. Much later, I went to Stratford-upon-Avon and saw Helen Mirren in the Tempest, which was our School Certificate play. The School Certificate was the equivalent of GCSEs, and you had to pass in six subjects. I took seven, but failed Religious Instruction, so I was still ok. For the Higher School Certificate, the equivalent of ‘A’ levels, I wanted to do science, which meant Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry. I couldn’t follow the Chemistry, so I gave this up and added a subsidiary subject: Applied Mathematics. This gave me two and a half subjects. You had to pass in either three main subjects, or two main plus two subsidiary subjects. The French mistress, Miss Lamin, insisted I took French (she followed the previous French mistress Miss Orr, who subsequently married Taw). It paid off – I got a good grade, and made use of it at university a few years later. It turned out that the best Mathematics books in the first year were written in French.

At lunchtime, Miss Lamin ran dance classes in the hall. So all the boys and girls learnt ballroom dancing – except me! I was playing the piano for them. There was also Alfred Barty who took History and Geography. He was rather sarcastic. If there was too much noise in the class, he would draw a red triangle on the board which meant danger, which we found very funny.

Another teacher I remember was Miss Ashcroft who taught English. In the middle of the war she married a Frenchman and emigrated to France, around 1941, which was a shame for us as we all liked her.

During the war, two schools were evacuated to Malton Grammar School: Newland School for Girls, Hull, and the Convent School, Middlesbrough. Quite often, two classes were going on at the same time in the hall, one at each end. I remember that my first Mathematics lesson in the sixth form (year 12) was one such occasion.

I left Malton Grammar School three days after my 17th birthday. A few weeks later I started work at Barclays Bank in Yorkersgate, which is still there. I stayed there for about 12 months, but as I wasn’t in a reserved occupation, I realised that when I was 18, I would be called up. So I volunteered for the army to avoid that, and was able to join the Royal Signals. The training for this started with six months at Exeter University with courses in Mathematics, Physics, and Radio. We had to do one day a week of military training here alongside our studies. Then we were sent to Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow, where we did our basic six weeks of square bashing (marching, drills, etc.). The next posting was Catterick, North Yorkshire, for 12 months, where I trained to be an instrument mechanic, mainly on wireless sets. From there I went to North Walsham, a few miles from Norwich, for final technical training. One day a general was coming to visit, and my job that day was to paint the barbed wire white. From there we went to Kirkburton, near Huddersfield, for two or three days to pick up our tropical kit. Then to Glasgow to get the boat to Bombay (now known as Mumbai). It was early 1945. Our route was via the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. The Red Sea was the hottest place I’ve ever been. We landed in Bombay on VE Day, so everyone in London was celebrating, but our war was only just starting. We didn’t stay long in Bombay. We went to a place called Mhow in northwest India. That was a staging post, and I was quite upset because when we arrived, we had to hand in our rifles. Mine was brand new and I’d practised with it in the Lake District. When I left, they gave me a really old first world war rifle, a Lee–Enfield rifle. I said 'Look, I know which is my rifle as it has a serial number on'. 'Oh we’re not giving them out Sir' he said. The Indian army stole them! I was sent to Ranchi, to join the 86th Field Regiment, an Artillery regiment. I went by train, and was there until the war finished in September 1945.

We were lucky though. A fellow came into the tent while we were there, and said ‘The war’s over’. We thought he’d gone mad. We had no idea that the atom bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima in Japan.

A fortnight later we went to Malaya which was occupied at the time. The Malayans were so pleased to see us and invited us out for dinners. We played Mahjong with the ladies! I was there for two years (September 1945–September 1947), in Seremban, Penang, and finally Kuala Lumpur (KL), and in Singapore at various times. It was a Tuesday afternoon when I got a letter from a girl in Malton. She told me a terrible, terrible story. She said she had a brother in the army, in Malaya. One day he was walking through the jungle. Now this surprised me because this was out of bounds to us. As he was walking, he’d tripped over a cable in the undergrowth, which turned out to be a high voltage cable and he was electrocuted.

She said he was buried in a cemetery near KL. No other details. His mother desperately wanted a photograph of his grave. An impossible task. I had no transport, no camera. And I was leaving by train on the Saturday.