I
t’s easy to criticise social media – at best,
people sharing mundanities and selfies, at worst
causing geopolitical havoc – but sometimes it
provides a welcome surprise. I’ve been on Twitter
for nearly a decade and one of the most startling
reactions I’ve received on the site was through
a tweet about Winchester College.
I took a photo of these lines with my smartphone
and tweeted the image along with this caption:
‘I love this obituary in my old school’s magazine.
He landed at Normandy on D-Day, helped liberate
Belsen, married the man he loved - and finally
decided to live by the name he’d always wanted.
Here’s to Bill.’
This had soon been shared by over 2,000 people
and ‘liked’ by over 11,000. The Independent
published an article on it having gone viral, while
online magazine ‘LADBible’ ran a story headlined
‘Obituary For World War Two Veteran Shows How
You Live Your Life To The Fullest’. A Spanish
newspaper, El Confidencial, joined in, with an article
titled ‘El obituario más increíble que te vas a
encontrar este año’.
What was it about this particular obituary
that sparked so much interest? I think it was partly
the combination of the familiar and the surprising
packed into such a short space. Here, in just 236
words, was the rich texture of a life that encompassed
some of the most brutal events of the 20th century
and ended in the free and tolerant society that had
been won through overcoming them in the 21st. It
was a love story, of course, but also a tale of personal
integrity that presented a quiet, unshowy form of
individuality. Bill Hodges lived a long and successful
life his own way but, in what might have seemed
a small matter to some, he delayed his own wishes
so as not to offend his mother.
At Winchester, Bill – let’s call him that – was
a scholar who won several prizes: the Ross Homer
Prize for Greek and the junior Kenneth Freeman
Prize for classical literature/art/archaeology in 1938;
an exhibition in 1940; the silver medal for English
Speech and the senior Kenneth Freeman Prize in
1940. He was runner-up in a few others. Thanks to
back issues of the Trusty Servant and other sources,
we know he was quite the all-rounder. He played
Win Co Fo for College in November 1939,
Top: Jeremy Duns’ tweet about Bill Hodges went viral.
Above: Bill’s letters home are now archived at the
Imperial War Museum.
The Wykeham Journal 2018 29