No . 137 The Trusty Servant
Bobber ’ s Boys
Antony Beevor ( E , 53-58 ) reviews A Noble Company - Bobber ’ s Boys at War 1939-1945 , a book by Shaun Hullis ( CoRo , 02-08 ). The book launch took place at Win Coll on 27 th April .
This book begins with an utterly conventional school photograph . Four ranks of young Wykehamists gaze back at the camera . In the middle of the seated second row sits Malcolm Robertson , affectionately known as the ‘ Bobber ’, the housemaster of Hopper ’ s . It is the early summer of 1938 . The young men around him were part of that generation of whom many went straight to war instead of to university . The ‘ Bobber ’, an indefatigable correspondent , would keep in touch with them wherever they were in the world , and they would write back to a father figure who had never ceased to encourage them .
This book is based on their letters in Winchester College archives , and Shaun Hullis must be congratulated on an extraordinary achievement . His background research is deeply impressive to say nothing of the profusion of maps and photographs he has assembled .
A Noble Company begins with a chapter on the First World War . This describes the experiences of the ‘ Bobber ’ himself and the five Wykehamists he took with him to the 9 th Battalion the Duke of Wellington ’ s Regiment . The ‘ Bobber ’, famous for his size sixteen boots , proved a natural leader as well as a father confessor to the men in his company . Frederick Cullinan , one of the Bobber ’ s five lieutenants , described conditions on the Somme in November 1916 .
To give you a small idea of what the mud is like up there , you will find it hard to believe that one
man in my Company was stuck in the mud for three days and three nights , under intense shellfire . When we got him out , he died of exhaustion .
Their brigade commander could hardly believe his eyes when he came across the scene of the battalion ’ s attack .
In the old No Man ’ s Land the bodies of our men were to be seen just as they fell , in every conceivable attitude ; some prone , others huddled up in a crouching position , or kneeling in the act of firing , all stark and rigid like so many wax-work figures . In the captured German trenches the dead in places were literally piled up in heaps , friend and foe mixed up in an inextricable mess where hand-to-hand fighting had taken place .
Among them was Alan Ferguson , who had been one of the Bobber ’ s five Wykehamists . The human detail is both convincing and poignant . ‘ We were really bucked to be alive ’, wrote one of them after coming out of the line ,
Hopper ’ s House Photo , 1938
‘ though for the first few hours , after all the shelling , we kept ducking at the whistling of the wind in the trees !’
The Second World War , in contrast , would see Wykehamists spread across the world in almost every imaginable theatre of war and military outfit . They served in rifle regiments , the Foot Guards , the Royal Artillery , the Royal Tank Regiment , there was a sprinkling of cavalrymen and sappers , and of course a number joined the Royal Navy , Fleet Air Arm , and the RAF . Many were self-deprecating about their lack of professionalism , yet even some of the least likely candidates emerged as natural leaders . Not surprisingly , the unflappable Willie Whitelaw proved an outstanding commander with the Scots Guards in Normandy .
Their letters , mostly back to the Bobber , bring to life much of this strange new reality they faced . It is also striking to find how strongly the poetic tradition of the First World War lived on . On the death of the Hurricane pilot Nigel Weir , who was no mean poet himself , a fellow Hopperite wrote :
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