Over 1000 Ardinians – former pupils and masters – fought in WWI. More than 150 died. This year, as we remember all those who lost their lives on active duty, we’re sharing an item from the Archive that tells the story of one of Ardingly’s fallen WWI soldiers.
Anthony Gerald Malpas Roberts joined Ardingly College in 1910 at the age of 15. He left in April 1913 after a distinguished school career and joined the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. 15 months later, in August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. On 21 October 1914, Gerald Roberts was killed in action. He was just 19 years old.
In the Archive we have a Memorial Album created by Gerald’s mother, Annie Maria Roberts, which tells the story of a gifted athlete and schoolboy turned soldier. On opening the album, a handwritten note pasted to the endpapers tells us that this is a “Chronicle of [the] sports career of her son, Lt. Gerald A M Roberts, age 19 years: 2nd R. Inniskilling Fusillers [sp] killed in action in the Great World War of 1914.”
On the next page are two photographs: one of Gerald in military uniform and another of a shrine-like array of trophies on a table. Immediately we get a sense of how much Gerald accomplished in his short life, and are left to wonder what he may still have achieved if he had had the chance.
And so begin pages of press cuttings covering Gerald’s athletic successes. The September 1911 Annals record his first win of the Victor Ludorum medal, which he would go on to win three times in a row – a new record. Alongside the Annals cuttings is a small photograph of a boy, presumably Gerald, in a race. There is only one competitor in sight, and even he is a clear distance behind. With Gerald setting College records, it wasn’t long before he was getting attention outside of his school and we see newspaper clippings begin to appear alongside those from the Annals.
An April 1913 Evening News article reads, “To-day I would like to give another instance of a smart schoolboy who will undoubtedly make something out of the ordinary if he can be induced to keep up his athletics. He is Mr. A. G. Malpas Roberts, and he was a pupil at St. Saviour’s School, Ardingly.” It is a wholly positive piece, where the author’s greatest worry seems to be whether “he will keep up his athletics, or whether any professional duties will interfere with his running?”
Interspersed with the sports clippings are Annals cuttings about – and a photograph of – Ardingly’s Officers’ Training Corps (OTC). We read about Gerald’s promotion to Corporal and that “On Speech Day [1912] the Corps attended service in Chapel in full uniform, and afterwards “Marched Past” in two companies before Colonel Campion. This display was exceedingly well done, and the general smartness of the Corps afforded great gratification to the large number of visitors and parents who witnessed it.” Between August 1914 and March 1915, more than 20,500 junior officers and 12,000 soldiers of other ranks were commissioned from the public school and university OTCs.
Gerald is not included in these figures, as a tiny newspaper clipping tells us that he joined the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers as a Second Lieutenant in May 1913, the month after he left school. Very little is included about Gerald’s army career both before and during the war – this is, as we are told at the beginning of the album, a chronicle of Gerald’s sports career. We do know that he carried on running, as a newspaper cutting proclaims that “one of the finds of the season has most certainly been the auburn-haired young officer of the Inniskillings, A. G. M. Roberts.”
The first reference to Gerald’s death in the main body of the album comes from the London Athletic Club’s annual general meeting report, where the club’s president “referred feelingly to the loss which had been sustained by the deaths of such famous members as…A. G. M. Roberts, who, although barely 19 years of age, had proved himself to be one of the best sprinters in England.”
This tribute is followed in the album by the War Office telegram notifying Gerald’s family of his death, and a telegram from Buckingham Palace dated two days later. While the telegrams express the sympathies of Lord Kitchener and the King and Queen – and have now become one of the most recognisable symbols of wartime loss – they are, by their nature, impersonal.
Providing something of an antithesis is a copy of the eulogy given by Marchant Pearson, Gerald’s headmaster at Ardingly. It is in this document that we get the greatest sense of Gerald as a person: “But what shall I say of the poor boy who has been taken from us? It is hard to put into words what one feels and what is in one’s heart. I knew him as a Public School boy and I had not known him many weeks before I saw in him the qualities of leadership, qualities that make for success in life…He became one of my trusted helpers, he became one of the school prefects, he became one of a little band responsible for the well being of the school and for keeping its heart pure… and too he was a boy to whom I as the Head Master could entrust any duty with the utmost confidence that the last ounce of work expected from him at duty’s call would be done to his best and full ability.”
The headmaster’s sense of sorrow for Gerald’s lost future is present throughout the eulogy: “We can not help thinking of what he might have been… Success I am sure would have been his: a long time ago I told his Father I expected for him a most successful career. Could his career have been more successful? He could not have done better for his school. He has shed his blood and given his life for his country, and has left behind a record at Ardingly that we shall always remember with pride. There is a great gap in the home, there is a great gap in the lives of [those] who knew him, but we believe in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, and we believe death is the door to life, and that there is a Heaven.”
When we turn to the final page of the album, we notice one of its most visually striking features: the two photographs that bookend it. At the beginning, the shrine-like collection of trophies, medals and prizes laid out on a table, with a photograph of Gerald in military uniform sitting atop it all; at the end, a faded photograph of Gerald himself standing proudly behind a smaller table of trophies. As we reach the end of the album, and the end of this record of Gerald’s short life, the faded photograph reminds us of what he once was and what he could have been – and we remember.
