In response to Mr Cairns’s call, the school was overwhelmed by emails and photographs from pupils, staff, parents, OBs, and even members of our international schools. Dozens of our fallen OB graves and memorials were visited on Remembrance Day itself, and in the days and weeks leading up to it. In total, we received over 100 photographs from these visits, many of which are now on the entries of our fallen Old Brightonians on Brighton College Remembers. It was moving to see the touching ways you chose to commemorate them.
In the lead-up to this year’s Remembrance, The Principal is once again encouraging our community to use this map, visit these graves and memorials, and reflect on the lives and sacrifices of our fallen OBs.
Perhaps you live close to one of the graves in England, are visiting northern France or Belgium where so many of the WW1 fallen are buried, or will be in Singapore where several of our fallen OBs are commemorated at the Singapore Memorial?
You can access the Remembrance Map here.
If you choose to visit a grave or memorial over the following month, we encourage you to take a photo and share any reflections with us using remember@brightoncollege.net. These can then be uploaded onto the individual fallen entries on Brighton College Remembers by our archive team.
John Carr (Sc. 1968-73) wrote to the OB office with the following update:
I for one hope to visit the grave of George Cornelius Buxton at Byley Cheshire who was killed in 1942 when the RAF plane he was travelling in crashed near Cranage in Cheshire. You can pick his story up in the flagged map you issued.
George attended Brighton College 1935 -1939 alongside my father Douglas Nicholson Carr. They were both in School House and were the best of friends playing in the first fifteen Rugby team together.
During school holidays George would visit my father at his family home in Cumberland. Dad was from the Carrs of Carlisle Biscuit family.
The school boy connection has a very poignant side as my father subsequently joined the Royal Armoured Corps and ended up on patrol in the Libyan Desert. He was in the Tank Regiment when he came under fire from a German Stuka dive bomber.
The injuries he received were horrific and telegrams sent back to my Grandparents made it clear that the prognosis was not good.
A further telegram received stated that he was going to be treated with Penicillin a new drug that was being trialled in the area.
I had always heard that my Dad was one of the first to have this drug but it wasn’t until I watched a programme on Television called Great British Inventions that Penicillin was given the number one vote by viewers.
After watching the program I typed my father’s name on the internet: "Douglas Nicholson Carr Penicillin North Africa" I was amazed to find that his whole case history had been detailed in a book called The Mould in Dr Florey’s Coat by Eric Lax. He recovered well enough to be sent back home in a troop ship a month later!
As with many old soldiers my father never really talked about the war but for the rest of his life carried much shrapnel in his body….a constant reminder.
Many years later he took my brother and myself to meet George Buxton’s father at his home at Scaynes Hill near Haywards Heath. It must have been hard for Mr Buxton most probably thinking that his own son should be alive too.
I felt sad that George never lived beyond the age of 21 whilst my father lived a full life to the age of 84.
Two very different outcomes for a couple of Brightonians drawn in to the horrors of War.