Head's Newsletter 11 November 2016

Remembrance Day 2016

Herbert William Parslow was at Tiffin between 1897 and 1903. He enlisted with his brother in the London Rifle Brigade in September 1914 and is presumed to have died on the 1 st July 1916, the first day of the battle of the Somme. His body was never found but his name is commemorated on the Thiepval memorial. He was aged just 27. Albert Jack Parslow was at Tiffin between 1907 and 1909. He joined up on 22 nd November 1915 and trained with the Artists Rifles in their officer training corps. In the middle of September 1916 he was sent to the Western Front and barely three weeks later on the 10 October he was mortally wounded and died aged just 22. He is buried in Grove Town Cemetery, Meaulte, alongside some 1400 British casualties. From the Second World War we also remembered John Birley Page . Born in 1905 he attended Tiffin School between 1915 and 1920. On leaving Tiffin John entered the navy as a boy cadet. In 1938 he was appointed to HMS Repulse, a battle cruiser. In 1941 HMS Repulse was sent to Singapore as part of Force Z intended to deter the Japanese. Only three days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour Force Z was attacked by Japanese dive bombers in the South China Sea. HMS Repulse was hit by five torpedoes and sank with the loss of 508 lives including John Birley Page. He was aged just 36 and left a widow and three children. His name is commemorated on the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth as well as the Tiffin Memorial.

This year has seen the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme on the Western Front. The battle lasted for 141 days between 1 July and 18 November 1916. On the first day alone there were 57,000 British and Commonwealth casualties with 19,000 killed or missing. It was the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. By the time that the battle had fizzled out in November, British and Commonwealth casualties had reached 420,000 with 96,000 killed or missing. Of the 125 names on the School’s First World War memorial we know that fourteen of them died on the Somme. Today, Friday 11 November, we remembered two of those men in our Services across the School, who ironically had the same surname but were not related.