A Spitfire Pilot Remembers: Chapter 4 - School Progess And A Growing Family
In the fourth episode of his entertaining autobiography John M Davis tells us of a spate of accidents which he had while still at school. Hardly what you would expect of a lad who would acquire the skills required to fly a Spitfire!
We slowly moved up the school. On the way I continued to demonstrate that I was still accident-prone. Vaulting over the horse in the gym, I managed to break my ankle, and my mother had to be called to collect her damaged son.
On another occasion my mother came up to watch me play cricket. As wicket keeper I managed to miss the ball, which hit me on the head. The damaged boy was handed over the railings to be taken home by his mummy.
One day I saw a girl from a school near us whom I found very attractive. She got on the little 210 bus, and we both got off at Golders Green Station and walked onto the Finchley Road to catch a trolley bus. Hers arrived first, and I watched her climb aboard and thus did not realise that another one was drawing up behind. The first realisation was when it squashed my foot. Amazingly no bones were broken, but the foot turned black and it was impossible to participate in the inter-house relay event two days later. A great disappointment.
The 220 or 440 yards were my best racing distances, and I did reasonably well. At soccer and cricket I was a fair average. Good enough for our Southgate House team but not for any of the school teams. Southgate never won anything.
Academically I was not a great success after my first term. In view of my success then, they transferred me to the Classical A stream, but a 7% in a Latin exam soon had me back in Modern B stream, where I coped reasonably.
Peter was doing well. I recall one occasion when he placed a grape on his neighbour’s seat. A squeak from the neighbour resulted in Peter’s having to write out 100 times:
The grape that grows upon the vine
Along the banks beside the Rhine
Is meant for us to eat and drink
Not place upon our neighbour’s seat.
Two thoughts from this event. The first is admiration for the master who composed this poem in two to three minutes. The second is that I can still remember it so many years later.
One of the subjects was mechanical drawing, which was not for me, and so I had a couple of terms of Spanish under a part-time master, Sr. Flores. He succeeded in stimulating my interest in a language that has been of enormous value and pleasure to me.
I also enjoyed French under Howard Fabian, a famous amateur footballer and cricketer. When, in a post-war return visit to the school, I was able to tell him how valuable my French was proving in my business career, he blushed with pride. What I did not tell him was that I had to forget his inadequate French accent, which was a typical Englishman speaking French.
One morning I awoke with a fierce stomach pain and sickness. A visit from the doctor resulted in a rushed ambulance trip to a London Nursing Home, where my appendix was removed the same day. It was bulging and about to burst. I kept it in a jar for years until Hilde quietly disposed of it when we moved out of Templars Avenue. One of the Nursing Home nurses took great delight in making me laugh, which was painful, but supposed to be good for me. It meant a lot of time off school, with a further period when no games were permitted.
We boys used to fight one another, and once I broke the fourth finger of my left hand when I hit Peter. My father merely commented, “Serves you right. It shows you did not hit him properly.” Although I splinted the finger, the breakage is still visible.
Cousin Minnie
It was at this time that my lovely first cousin, Minnie Cohen, the only child of my father’s sister Julia, got married to an American Rabbi, David Seligson, who had served in the Birmingham Liberal Synagogue, in which city Minnie and her parents had lived for many years.
During their courting period, Peter and I had gone up to Birmingham and stayed in the same digs as David. We managed a long walk in the Lickey Hills. David was obviously a delightful fellow, and we were happy when they married in London, with family and friends entertained afterwards in our house. David had never liked the name ‘Minnie’, so his wife became ‘Minna’.
As a youngster, Minnie had sometimes come down to London, and Peter and I always found her visits exciting. As we learned family history, it was interesting to find how popular had been the names Minnie and Julia in the Davis family.
Since a young Rabbi earned a comparatively small salary, my father and his brother Joe provided David with an allowance for a while. Minnie’s father Clifford had already died.
When the war came the following year, David felt that he should be considering a return to his native USA. So indeed he took his wife and mother-in-law across the Atlantic, and soon found a congregation there.
When Pearl Harbour happened in the autumn of 1941, David volunteered immediately and was shipped out to India as an army captain. There he served with distinction, providing religious care to both American and British servicemen. A service he and a British army rabbi took for a mixed group of servicemen ended unhappily. When he, a Liberal, had finished, the British Rabbi, Orthodox, rose to his feet and said, “After that I think you will need a real service.”
After the war the Seligson family, which by now included a six-year-old daughter Mickey, came to London and stayed with my parents. By this time I was married with a pregnant wife. Mickey, patting her stomach and saying, “Hello, Lulu,” stays in my memory. I have always believed that Jill, their second daughter, was conceived in our house.
When many years later Jill was to marry, her father was semi-retired. He was coming over to Dublin at the time of the Jewish holy days in order to lead the services in a Progressive Synagogue, which was not yet large enough to have its own Rabbi. Jill and her fiancé, Charles, decided to come over to Dublin to be married by her father. So cousin Edward and I flew across the Irish Sea to be with them all.
Although separated by the Atlantic, it is great to see that family closeness continues to the next generation. We have remained so close to them all. If we go to USA, we stay with them.
I am afraid that our American cousins have caused me to get out of sequence with my life story. But such an important part of the family deserves a proper introduction.
