A Life Less Ordinary: B I L L
HODGES
Top: Jeremy Duns pores over one of Bill’s letters.
Above: Back row; A H C Hill (1935-41; Cap. Prae), W H
Plommer (1934-40; Bib. Prae.); Front Row; C H W Hodges
(1935-40; Cap. Prae.), T D Andrew (1934-40; Aul. Prae.),
J M Mitchison (1935-40; School Prae.)
‘Looking at the photograph
of Bill seated with his
classmates in Cloister in
1940 is sobering … four years
later this rather severe, pale-
looking young man would be
on the beaches of Normandy.’
30 The Wykeham Journal 2018
and a month later played the bassoon at the
school concert. He was briefly a member of
the Debating Society, and was vice president
of SROGUS, the Shakespeare Reading and
Orpheus Glee United Society.
For younger OWs this all sounds within the
realm of normality, even if some of the prizes no
longer exist. But looking at the photograph of
him seated with his classmates in Cloister in 1940
is sobering when one considers that four years later
this rather severe, pale-looking young man would
be on the beaches of Normandy.
His two letters home held at the Imperial War
Museum offer a snapshot into his mentality during
and directly after the war. In parts he gives off an
almost breezy tone, presenting a stiff upper lip. In
a letter to his parents in September 1944, he filled
them in on ‘what I’ve been up to since D-Day’,
most notably his involvement in the Battle for
Caen and its aftermath:
‘We then spent several weeks in holes in the
ground being pestered by Boches and mosquitoes,
but more by the latter … When the Boches started to
break and fall back, we had a pretty hectic fortnight
chasing them along a line not far in from the coast
as far as the Seine. We kept the guns pretty well on
the heels of the ‘para boys’ and I believe some of
them christened us Bob Hope’s Commandos –
the C.O.’s real Christian name, though, is Maurice.’
He described the ‘crowded little seaside strip’
as ‘very dusty’ and ‘rather smelly’; after hammering
away at the positions, there was nothing but ‘broken
walls, and torn up fields stinking with dead cattle
and, after the attack, dead Germans.’
The other surviving letter is from ‘the notorious
Belsen camp’ on 20 May 1945, just 13 days after
victory had been declared in Europe. Bill tells his
parents he has been given two jobs, that of Welfare
Officer and Prosecuting Officer:
‘You’ve probably read about Belsen; it wasn’t
so much a torture camp as a dump where the
Germans sent the human beings they didn’t want,
and let them die of starvation and disease. The
medical staff, helped by the Red Cross and about
a hundred medical students from London hospitals
have worked wonders in the month or so since
the camp was liberated, though the daily death