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In spring of 1943 I started as a day-boy at Clifton College’s Preparatory School in The Avenue, Clifton, Bristol. I was eight years old and the Prep, as it was known, was reduced to about thirty day-boys, the boarders having been evacuated out to Butcombe in Somerset which was thought to be less likely to be the object of German bombs than Clifton. For the same reason, the Senior School occupied several of the requisitioned hotels at Bude in Cornwall.

The Prep was contained in just one house, Mathews, and we had a small part of the former playground allowed to us for our recreation. Mr Dodds was in charge of us and I particularly recall Miss West and Miss Jolly as teachers. The rest of the school buildings were taken over by the American Army under General Omar Bradley. It was here that a lot of the planning of the American involvement in the D-Day landings took place but we had no concept of this. I remember school lunches, which were not in the least like my mother’s cooking and the vile taste of synthetic mashed potato called ‘Pom’. There is also the faint recollection of an occasional donation of ice cream and candy coming our way from the Americans. Because of an injury to my hand I had to have some painful physiotherapy and the nurse of Mr Priddy, the surgeon, had a boy-friend in the US Army so if I put up with the pain I got a chocolate Hershey Bar! Just before D-day the playground was full of parked trucks and one of my friends was underneath one when we were called to go in; he stood up and cut his head badly. He still recalls the impact that he and his blood made!

We lived in Frampton Cotterell some eight miles out of Bristol and my father would take me into the school each day as he worked in one of the dispersed Bristol Aeroplane Company aircraft drawing offices in Ivor House and Wick House on Durdham Downs. Other aircraft offices were in the Zoo restaurant, Worral Road dance studios and Clevedon. At the end of my school day, I would walk the mile or so from The Avenue to his offices, and I was allowed to sit in the dining room of Wick House and do my homework, which was always known as ‘prep’. The dining room was sumptuously panelled and the whole house had a sort of aura of gravity about it with wide staircases and ornately plastered ceilings. The kindly kitchen ladies would bring me a glass of milk and a piece of cake. There were extensive gardens to both Wick and Ivor House and an internal pathway meandered between the two. Despite the war, a gardener was retained and the place was kept neat and tidy. From Ivor House garden there was a passageway cut into the rock which led down into the Glen, which must have been an extension of the garden at one time. There was also a greenhouse and figs could be eaten in summer.

Ivor House garage was converted into the print room and it had an awful smell of ammonia. I would sometimes go into my father’s office in Ivor House if he was going to work extra late, and there I would meet Mr Frise, who was famous for the invention of the differential aileron, Mr Russell, later Sir Archibald, who became closely associated with the Concorde project. The Bristol Brigand was being designed at about this time but my father was working on the 100-ton bomber. This work was connected with the Convair Company in San Diego California and they went on to produce the B36 bomber. BAC changed its design somewhat and the aircraft became the Bristol Brabazon. Occasionally on the way home we would have to call in at the Filton factory and I remember the line up of Bristol Beaufighters down on the airfield and in the butts, having their gun sights aligned. I’m sure there was good security but nobody seemed to mind an accompanied small boy going into the offices and works. I even remember being allowed into (or possibly smuggled into) a visiting Boeing B17 bomber. When D-day came, the US servicemen, their trucks and goodies disappeared and the playground was all ours.

No doubt this background set me on the path of working in the aerospace industry and twenty-one years after first walking down The Avenue in Clifton, Bristol, I was sent to work in Washington DC. My wife and I bought our first house on the Virginia bank of the Potomac River and just half a mile down-river lived General Omar Bradley, US Army, retired. We met US servicemen who had been posted to Clifton and they had fond memories and none of them ever forgot Alfred the Gorilla and Rosie the Elephant next door in Clifton Zoo! And every Fourth of July you will see the Stars and Stripes flying from the top of Clifton’s Wilson Tower.

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