CRA AGM

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The CRA AGM will be held at Southover on the 17th November 2011
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The CRA - Now on Twitter

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Not content with a website, a blog and a Facebook page, you can now follow news updates from the CRA on Twitter.

Just search  CRA_Dpdate or follow the link.
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Christ's College to be an Academy from September

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I am pleased to be able to confirm that the Secretary of State has agreed an Academy Order for Christ’s College Finchley.

This is a major milestone in the school’s development. Subject to governors being content with all legal and financial issues surrounding the conversion the school can become an Academy on September 1st 2011. Head and Governors have been working hard on the process, ensuring that everything connected with the transfer of land buildings and staff to the new Christ’s College Finchley Academy Trust is done properly and goes smoothly. We want to be certain that the school is placed in the best possible position as it faces this next chapter in its development. Further updates will be posted on the website as the conversion process unfolds this term.

G Tucker

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CRA Dinner 2011

The 2011 CRA Dinner was a great success. A full report will follow in due course - but here are some images. As always, click on an individual image for a larger version but if you would like a full resolution copy for printing at home, please email me.

The 2011 CRA Dinner

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The 2011 CRA Dinner will be held at Southover on the 3rd June.

The usual letters and emails will be going out shortly - but make a note in your diary and please make every effort to attend this year. You can save a great deal of administration time (and postage costs) if you download the invitation letter directly from the CRA website at www.c-r-a.org.uk

If you were at the 2010 dinner you will know that the change of caterer allowed us to achieve sensible timings so that member with great distances to travel were not inconvenienced (and more local members could spend more time at the bar).

Our innovation this year is the ability to pay by Paypal which may be more convenient for some members. Simply email dinner@c-r-a.org.uk for a Paypal invoice.

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CCF Remembrance Day 2010

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Copied below is an address given by our President, Brian Fuller at the School's Remembrance Day service last year.

About three years ago Mick Crick, the Chairman of the CRA, embarked on a project to try and find out more about the names which appear on the school's two War Memorials.

On each memorial there are over 90 names of boys from this school who gave their lives in the two World Wars.

By this time last year some of you may remember, from the Stockdale Trust display in the dining hall, he had established the locations of nearly all of those names by

checking the records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who maintain the cemeteries and memorials of war dead throughout the world.

Many of them lie buried in France where there are over 900 cemeteries and memorials but some are in cemeteries spread across the globe from Canada, Australia, Singapore and Gallipoli in Turkey.

For the last two years, in November, he has been able to visit and place poppy crosses on nine graves of ex-pupils located in the North London area – five are in the cemetery next to this school.

Meanwhile, some others of us had also become involved and we had located and visited the graves or memorials of two ‘old boys’ buried in Cornwall, one in Oxford and, during a battlefield tour, two who had emigrated to Australia and joined the Australian Forces only to fight and die in the Gallipoli Campaign in Turkey. A further eight were found on the Naval War Memorials at Portsmouth and another two at Plymouth.

In October this year, three of us, all ex-cadets, went to visit the World War One battlefields in northern France to visit the graves and memorials of some of those on this memorial. We concentrated on the names on this memorial because we had established that over 70 of those 99 names were in an area stretching some 40 miles from Ypres in the north to Albert in the south along the lines of the trenches which formed the front line during World War One.

Over a period of three days we were able to locate and visit 45 of these in 27 cemeteries and the five memorials at Pozieres, Thiepval, Cambrai, Arras and Loos. Most of them we were able to drive to but one involved travelling down an unmade track and a short trek across a ploughed field. Pushing the car out afterwards gave us a taste of the “Flanders mud”.

At each we were able to place a poppy cross and, from the Commonwealth War Graves register at each cemetery, learn a little more about each individual and how and where he had died. We were struck by how many were barely out of their teens but also how many were junior officers probably leading their men into battle. Christ’s College, even then, were providing leaders – as they still do today.

As we placed a poppy cross at each grave or memorial we solemnly affirmed the exhortation; “They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning – we will remember them”.

The project continues and next year we hope to return to locate the remainder of the boys in northern France including seven who have no known grave but who are remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres.

In the dining hall is a pictorial account of this latest visit which I hope you will have time to visit and pause and consider what the boys of Christ’s College gave in those Wars.

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Justin Hereford (CCF 1941 - 1948)

Sadly I have to report the passing of Justin Hereford on 4th November at Frimley Park Hospital. His funeral is to be at 3.30pm on Tuesday 16th Novemberat The Park Crematorium, Guildford Road, Aldershot GU12 4BP.There are to be family flowers only and they have yet to inform us of any charity for anyone wishing to make a donation in his memory.

After school (1941-48) Justin returned and served with the Unit from 1957 until 1969 when he retired following ill-health although we saw him at many CRA gatherings thereafter. Many of you

will recall him as a serving officer with the Unit and for his exploits as "Admiral, The Lord George, of Harwich" following the debacle of the sea-landing exercise at Annual Camp in 195?.

Brian Fuller has been asked to write some notes for The OF Magazine and would therefore appreciate any anecdotes which you have regarding this founder member and first Vice-Chairman of our Association. A full obituary will appear in the next edition of Ricochet.

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