A Legacy from a Rhodes Scholar
Harold Ernest Whiteman
Dayboy 1908-1914
If ever there was an example of the loss inflicted by war, it’s the story of former Guildfordian Harold Whiteman.
The 1915 Rhodes Scholar was killed attempting his first solo flight with the Royal Flying Corps, at Netheravon, Wiltshire, on October 23, 1916. The date marked the first anniversary of the former school captain and junior master’s arrival in England, where he’d intended studying law at Exeter College, Oxford, after the Great War.
The eldest of six children of pioneer brick maker Ernest Whiteman and his wife, Hannah, Harold was born on February 21, 1895.
At 13, he entered Guildford as a boarder on a 200 pound Secondary Schools’ Scholarship. His all-round ability soon became apparent as he excelled academically, at sport and in the life of the school that came to mean so much to him.
Former Headmaster, Percy Henn, in his Rhodes Scholarship testimonial cited Whiteman’s first among WA candidates for the 1913 Adelaide Higher Exam and his record in cricket, football, running, cadets, shooting, rowing, debating and as school captain.
Rev. Henn also praised the popular junior master’s skills as a teacher.
‘During the past year he has given such time as he could afford from University studies to teaching on the staff, and without prejudice to the former (as his Examination record testifies!) he has done excellent teaching work, showing … that he can handle a large form well…’
Statistics can be retrieved, but its personal accounts that flesh out the character behind the achievements. Thanks to Harold Whiteman’s youngest sister, the late Mrs Lila Baker, of Middle Swan, copies of some of the many letters he wrote home to his family in his last year survive in the school archives.
Significantly, there’s no mention to the family of any threat to the SS Miltiades as it took him towards Plymouth. He was more forthcoming to old school friends, as The Swan (December, 1915) recorded:
‘…His voyage did not become exciting until the ship reached the danger zone, when Whiteman was one of 12 told off for special watch. He was on watch at the gun and had full instructions for the control of passengers and others in case the ship was torpedoed and they had to take the boats…’
In England that month he enlisted in the Inns of Court Officer’s Training Corps, citing his experience as a 2nd Lieutenant with his old school’s 89th Battalion to quickly get to camp in Hertfordshire.
‘Huge pay one shilling per day here, Australian private six shillings’, he wrote with irony.
One of his tasks in the Berkhamsted camp was trench digging. ‘It reminded me of …the clay hole at home.’
Zeppelin watches also rated a mention.
‘We had no Zeppelin raids while I was in London, and I thought I was safe up here. But last night they visited the Eastern and Midland districts and we heard beforehand and had all preparations made to fire on them and protect the inhabitants if they came here. We were on night operations till after midnight. We went to bed, knowing we had to be up at 6am and hoping a Zep’s visit would not disturb our five hours sleep. Fortunately it did not.’
There were other encounters on leave in London.
‘At Euston Station I had some funny experiences with some of London’s night-walking women. After many had sat beside me, I had two each side of me when all the other Inns of Court men came along. They looked at me rather hard as they passed, thinking, I suppose, that I had made a rare catch. However, after some time they all deserted me – and my heart was broken.’
The rigours of camp life failed to quell an overriding spirit of optimism and good humour.
‘…I can only say I enjoy life here…I spent my 21st birthday very happily. It was snowing heavily and I marched about 18 miles in it and then spent the night in trenches.’
Whiteman’s appointment to a Commission came earlier than he expected, on Anzac Day, 1916. With his promotion to 2nd Lieutenant with the 2nd Battalion of the 8th Hampshire Regiment came a pay rise to 10 shillings per day. In May, he was transferred to Newtown, on the Isle of Wight, to do musketry shooting and bombing. He claimed his success at throwing bombs was ‘due, no doubt, to the fact that I was a fast bowler in cricket!’
It was at this time that he started to express a keen desire to go abroad.
‘Things are moving very rapidly and huge numbers of men are going out…In many ways I shall be pleased to go, as I feel that I have been here a good time now and if I don’t go abroad soon, Western Australian people whose representative I am as Rhodes Scholar will say that I am scrimshanking.’
Yet his comments on the growing casualty lists must have done little to appease his anxious family back home.
‘…there’s something doing in France now. You should see the number of hospital ships that pass daily by this coast from France. Every day’s paper contains a list of 150 officers and about 1200 men. The Canadians in particular have been getting it in the neck.’
On a lighter note was his frustration with an Army Order commanding all officers and men to grow moustaches.
‘It’s a deuced nuisance as you know. I hate all idea of moustaches. However, it has to be done. I am jolly glad the photo has been taken before the order came out.’
By August, all the fit men in Whiteman’s regiment had gone to India. He wrote home that he too was ‘engaged in different work’, but didn’t disclose the nature of that work until September.
‘About the time that I wrote saying it was time to go abroad, word came calling for volunteers for the RFC. I volunteered immediately…The infantry in trenches is the most woe-begotten task upon earth. Hellish fire etc, discomforts of food, sleeping etc. Now look at flying – we live in billets far behind the lines. No lice, no sleeping in slush and snow. Again, an aeroplane flies 1000ft up and only one in about three hundred is ever brought down by fire. Bullets go through the wings and do no harm. Engines and apparatus are being brought so up to date that I can safely say that flying is the safest job in the Army…You will clearly see this from the fact that 750 infantry officers, wounded from the front and recovered, joined the RFC in August.’
Another attraction was the end of the moustache.
‘…in the RFC a moustache is not insisted upon and so the day I left the Isle of Wight I got to work with a pair of scissors and a razor and off it came. I did not know what a difference it made till it was off.’
Soon afterwards he wrote: ‘The Australian casualty lists have been enormous lately. I find the names of many old schoolmates…’
Whiteman began flying with the No. 7 Reserve Squadron on September 30, writing later that ‘I found nothing sensational or funny about being in the air…it was simply delightful…’
Yet in the same letter he reported two bad crashes. ‘The pilots lost their heads aloft; in one case the pilot jumped out 30ft from the ground and was unhurt though his machine bore no resemblance to an aeroplane; in the other, machine and pilot came down in a heap; machine smashed to matchwood and pilot severely mangled, leg and rib broken, head gashed and internal bleeding. The doctor has high hopes of his recovery.’
The following week he wrote: ‘The man who crashed is getting on well, but will be partly maimed afterwards for life.’
Despite assurances that he felt ‘fit, confident and happy’, Whiteman’s family must have questioned the news that he would move to an advanced squadron after only three hours solo flying. And the paucity of instruction before trainee pilots were sent up alone.
Fellow trainee and friend (later Sir) Gordon Taylor did. In his autobiography, The Sky Beyond, he told how he went against his own ‘instinctive respect for authority’ after a terrifying introduction to the Maurice Farman trainer with a war worn instructor.
‘I hadn’t come all the way from my home in Australia to kill myself at the orders of this lunatic….But Anzac Whiteman was killed. On his first solo he got the nose down and flew into the ground.’
Former sports master, Rev. L.W. Parry eulogized Whiteman as ‘a good upright boy, with a wonderfully good influence on other boys and no fear of unpopularity could make him swerve from what he believed was right.’ He must have echoed the sentiments of the many friends and family of all the Guildford fallen when he wrote ‘we hoped there would be a brilliant future, and it is very sad to hear that he has been taken from us owing to this sad war.’
Two descendants of Harold Whiteman’s sister, Vera, joined Guildford Grammar Preparatory School in 2005. Joel (7M) and Anna Gratte (3W) now sing the same school hymn their great-great-uncle first sang as a new student 98 years ago.
Cheryl Rogers
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