GEORGE ARTHUR WHITE. Arborfield Army Technical School Intake 42B Contributed by: Trevor STUBBERFIELD (52A) |
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Browsing
the internet I stumbled across the following article about Arborfield Boy,
George White 42B. Unfortunately the
name of the author and source were not available so if anybody can supply the
information I would like to attribute the article correctly. I
have included it in the web site as an example of some of the diverse turns
that the careers of Arborfield lads sometimes took. ___________________________________________________________________________________ |
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George White 42B |
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George
White was born locally in Southsea in 1929 and age 11 was sent to the Duke of
York's Royal Military School in Dover for his education. Dover was an easy
target for German aircraft so George was evacuated several times. Between the
ages of twelve and fourteen George was the 4th Euphonium player in the School
Band. Joining the Army at fourteen he attended Army Tech School, where he
gave up boxing to join the Band and passed all his Army Certificates. VE Day
came and George was now a member of the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards Band, he
recalled that they played for 24 hours that day, it was non stop
celebrations. 1946 saw his first tour, a thirteen week Round Britain Tour
where each member of the band was paid 2s6d a performance but got fined
£5.0s.0d. if they forgot their mouthpiece, George only did that the once.
During the tour the band played three weeks in Glasgow and played all
thirty-four parks in the city. George enrolled at Kneller Hall and was given
a year to become a soloist. In 1948 he boarded the 'Samaria' at Liverpool to
take up his posting to Palestine in the last months and days of the British
Mandate. The band toured Libya and Tripoli, the Roman city of Sabratha and
encountered desert tribes on many occasions, returning to England at Christmas
in 1950. George returned to Kneller Hall as a student in 1956 and qualified
as a bandmaster in 1961. He was given the Band of the 6th Battalion King's
African Rifles in Tanganyika and had to prepare them for Independence Day.
1964 saw the Mutiny in Tanganyika and George was gaoled along with the rest
of the British military personnel out there. The British Army took them to
Nairobi but they had to leave everything behind, wives and children following
later. They were sent home on indefinite leave and given £1000 each to
replace their belongings. George next became bandmaster of the Cheshire
Regiment Band based in Warminster. Leaving the Army in 1969 George went to
Ayrshire to restart the Music Service in Schools and spent 25 years nurturing
and developing musical talent to retire in 1994 aged 65. He became a Chelsea
Pensioner in October last year to 'complete the circle'. |
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Editor’s note. Further
searches showed that George joined the Arborfield Army Technical School with
Intake 42B. Several coincidences began
to come to light, the first being that the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards Band,
which George joined, was based at Arborfield and played the music for parades
etc. A bit of poaching? Mention of his post as Bandmaster of the
Cheshire Regiment has a link with John Williams 52A who signed up as a
boy with the Cheshire’s band as a musician before transferring to Arborfield
as an Army Apprentice Tradesman. Slightly
before George 42B joining Arborfield, Brian
Conway 42A, another musician from the ‘Dukies’, joined the Arborfield
Military Band and became its first Apprentice Drum Major. The lead photo in our Military
Band section records some of these events. Norman
Padfield 46B took a similar career turn to George when, in 1948, he
joined the band of the 1st Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry as a Boy
Bandsman. George
entered the ‘Royal Hospital, Chelsea’ on the 16th October 2006 and was
finally recalled to H.Q. on the 27th January 2008. History
is always thought of as ‘cut and dried’ but there are always little pockets
that need picking to flesh out the human stories behind the basic facts. |
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Published: 15th August 2012. ___________________________________________________________________________________ |
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