Sir Frank's First Real "Break" (14 November 1975)
In almost every case of “local boy makes good” there is an original “break” – some piece of ingenuity, luck, wisdom or derring-do that puts him on the road to success.
I have noticed this many times when interviewing or even just talking with such men in their more expansive moments.
There is often a catalogue of achievements, but not much hint of the true starting point or, in a word, the “break.”
So it was with the late Sir Frank Markham. He almost never talked about his first “break.” I did not know of it until I deliberately asked him about it last year. He was then aged 77. He thought hard for a moment. Then he told me of what he described as “arguably the most important step I took in my life.” And it happened exactly 60 years earlier, when he was only 17.
His boyhood was unremarkable for those days. He was one of eight children of an insurance agent living in a cottage on Horsefair Green, Stony Stratford. He left the town elementary school at the age of 14 and his first job was that of a messenger boy at McCorquodale’s for 5s a week.
That did not last long. In fact, in the first two to three years of his working life he had no fewer than five jobs. “I have always been better at giving orders than carrying out other people’s,” he said with a smile.
During that period he attended evening classes at the Wolverton Science and Art Institute – until an incident occurred which caused him to leave. Many years later he was teased about having been “expelled.” This he denied.
“There was a girl in the class who was a real pest,” he explained. “I usually sat in front of her and she used to fire paper pellets at the back of my neck.
“One evening she sat in front of me. She leaned back on the chair. I tapped one of the chair legs with my foot and she fell off with her legs flying in the air. She raised a hullabaloo against me and the principal asked me to leave.”
He was about 16 when the first world war began. Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions. One day young Markham was reading the Daily Mail spread out over his mother’s sewing machine when his imagination was fired by a story about the early life of the Minister. He determined to have a political career himself.
If David Lloyd George, with his background could get somewhere, why shouldn’t Sydney Frank Markham?
That was not remarkable. Many boys of that age before and since have had similar ambitions – practically all doomed to failure or to second thoughts.
But his mind, like those of all his generation, was also on the war across the Channel. It was becoming clear that a long and sanguinary struggle lay ahead and that they would most likely be in it themselves before it was over.
Just as in 1939 and 1940, it was a traumatic time for all. Future careers depended on whether there was to be any future for them personally. Besides, the war might go on for years and years. Best get it over with.
When he was 17, he heard that the former North Bucks MP, Walter Carlile, of Gayhurst, was raising recruits for a British Red Cross unit in France. He obtained his father’s permission to join as a clerk and was soon over the water.
This was what he described as arguably his most important step, though the next two years gave no indication of it.
In due course he joined an infantry unit and was, in his own words “A very bad private.” He also had to cope with a sergeant major who, 60 years later, he still had nothing good to say about. Chancing his arm, he applied for a commission, but heard no more.
Then, one day, his battalion went over the top with the intention of taking an enemy fosse. The attack was beaten off with heavy losses. Private Markham and 19 others went to ground in a large shell crater in no-man’s-land. There was not even an NCO, let alone an officer, in the party, so the British Army’s automatic chain of command came into operation.
For the unitiated I must explain that this system operates from the field marshal down to the very last private. If there are no officers present, the senior NCO in rank takes charge. And if there are neither officers nor NCOs, then the senior soldier in length of service takes charge.
This was why Private Markham’s early enlistment became so important. He was found to be the senior soldier in the party, though he was only 19.
For two days and two nights – nights lit by star shells and Verey lights – they held the position, cut off from their own lines by the enemy’s fire power, but defiant.
Early in the period he sent two volunteer runners back to battalion HQ to report on the position. One of them was killed en route. Late on, he sent two more with further information. One was also killed.
Only on the third day were the party relieved by another and more successful British attack.
Back at battalion HQ the colonel congratulated Private Markham and told him he would be recommended for the DCM and also for a commission.
Private Markham, probably very tired and out of temper by this time, turned to the hated sergeant major and said something like “And no thanks to you.” Whereat he was properly reprimanded by the colonel and told he could now have either the DCM or the commission but not both. He opted for the commission.
For the next two years, he was an officer in India, where he saved £300 of his pay to follow up his next objective – a university education.
After demob he knocked vainly on the doors of several Oxford colleges, until finally one of them took him on trial. Men of his age and type were scarce as a result of the war. Here was one who, though he possessed none of the qualifications, had won a commission on the field. He should be given a chance to win a place in university. He took the chance . . .
No Comments
Add a comment about this page