Tag Archives: Pembroke College

Leonard James Moon

19161123_Moon,LJLeonard James Moon was at Westminster School, up Grants, from 1891 until 1896. He was the youngest of three brothers who were all exceptional athletes. Leonard was in both 1st XIs and continued to play association football whilst at Pembroke College, Cambridge and cricket of Middlesex in 1899 and 1901. In 1905 he played cricket for the national side against South Africa.

Wisden records that:

In the autumn of 1905 he was second in the averages for the M.C.C.’s team in America with 33.00, and before the next season opened toured South Africa with another M.C.C. side. During the latter tour he made 826 runs with an average of 27.33. He was a vigorous batsman who could cut well, and a useful wicket-keeper. At association football he gained high honours, obtaining his blue for Cambridge and playing for the Corinthians.

After university Leonard went into teaching and became Head Master of Wellesley House School, Broadstairs, Kent. After the outbreak of war, he enlisted in the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps, taking a commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the 10th Battalion of the Devon Regiment in February 1915. He served in France but lost his life in near Salonica in Greece.

Leonard was recorded in the school’s roll of honour as having died from wounds, but records found in The National Archives reveal that he actually committed suicide. Letters he left just before he died suggest that he was concerned about a rumour which had been spread about him and feared it would bring his regiment into disrepute. Leonard seems to have been suffering from paranoia as a result of what would now be identified as post-traumatic stress. A subsequent investigation found that his concerns were groundless.

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Kenneth Overend Howard Smith-Howard

Kenneth Smith-Howard was born on Christmas Day 1892 to George Howard Smith-Howard, a wholesale stationer, of Clapham Common, and his wife Emma Susan Laura, daughter of Henry Overend Wilson, of London.

His elder brother, Henry Wilfrid Howard Smith-Howard, had already completed his time at the school, so Kenneth was following in Henry’s footsteps when he arrived up Ashburnham in 1906. Whilst at the school, he studied on the Classical side and when he left the school in 1911 to go to Pembroke College, Oxford, he intended to take holy orders.

In May 1915, Henry, who was articled to a solicitor at the time, joined the Inns of Court OTC and the following August, Kenneth had joined the same OTC. However, by this time Henry had moved on to the 4th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment, with whom he went out to Egypt in January 1916.

On the 1st June 1916, Kenneth was made 2nd Lieutenant with the 10th (Reserve) Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment, and went out with them to the western front on 13th July. He was involved in the Battle of the Somme, but was killed in action near Bapaume on the 18th of October 1916. His brother Henry was wounded in the war, but survived and eventually went on to become a practicing solicitor in London.

Kenneth’s return in the Oxford University Roll of Service notes that his Commanding Officer said “he was splendid”:

 

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Cyril Vernor Miles

LT_CVMilesJust over a month after his younger brother Alfred was killed in action, Cyril Miles was sent to fight in the Battle of Loos.

At school, Cyril was a keen sportsman, participating particularly in Cricket and Football — receiving a Pink in footer in Lent 1911. But he also earned himself a reputation for playing pranks.

In his third winter at the school, Miles and a group of friends were discovered “very busy emptying pails of water in yard to make a slide for tomorrow if it freezes”, and got into trouble for being on the roof “and snowballing people in College Street, to their amusement and their victims’ disgust as theyÔǪ were quite invisible so they say”. One evening in January 1909, Miles produced a dead mouse that had just been caught in Hall, which his friend Hobson — an aspiring doctor — skinned.

When he left the school in 1911, he went on to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he continued to be a core member of the sporting scene. In Feburary 1914, he was mentioned in The Elizabethan:

Mr. C.V. Miles is a tower of strength to the all-victorious Pembroke Soccer team, which we believe to be so far unbeaten. He owns a small motor of a somewhat obstreperous disposition, which has on at least one occasion dragged him into the jaws of that legal code which he is said to be studying.

In August 1914, Cyril joined the South Wales Borderers as 2nd Lieutenant, and was attached to the Welsh Regiment in February 1915. He was sent out to the western front, where he was promoted to Captain on 29th July 1915. His little brother Alfred, who had been there since the previous October, was killed in Vermelles in August 1915.

Only a month later, on 26th September, Cyril was killed in action at Hulloch near Loos.

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