Public Schools!

This is coolbert:

It CANNOT be said that the English upper crust elite are averse to sending their young men to war. The opposite. Consider the case of Eton and Harrow, the two most prestigious of the English public schools.

Thanks to Al Nofi, CIC # 148 through StrategyPage.

"Eton, Britain's "Blessed College", sent 5,768 of her sons into the British armed forces during World War I [WW1], of whom 1,160 (20.1%) died and 1,467 (25.4%) were wounded, for a total of 2,629 casualties (45.4%), while garnering 13 awards of the Victoria Cross, 548 of the Distinguished Service Cross, and 744 of the Military Cross, for a total of one high decoration for every 4.4 alumni in the service."

“the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton” - - Wellington.

According to John Keegan, Wellington here is suggesting that:

"He [the Duke] was proposing a much more subtler idea: that the French had been beaten [at Waterloo] not by wiser generalship or better tactics or superior patriotism but by the coolness and endurance, the pursuit of excellence and of intangible objectives for their own sake which are learnt in game playing"

To clarify, Eton is what the English call a “public school”. NOT public in the American sense of the word. A PRIVATE school that trains the children primarily of the British elite to a high level of scholarship AND PATRIOTISM. Schools such as Eton, Rugby, Harrow.A “Mr. Chips” type of school. Game playing is an important part of public school life. The game Americans call soccer was codified and first played in the modern recognizable form at Eton! The game of rugby was first played at Rugby! IT IS NOT ONLY ETON THAT CONTRIBUTED A LOT OF ENGLISH YOUNG MEN WHO HAVE COMPORTED THEMSELVES WELL ON THE BATTLEFIELD. For Harrow we count winners of the Victoria Cross during the Great War [WW1] as eight:

* Major Ernest Wright Alexander.
* Captain Richard Raymond Willis.
* Captain Garth Walford.
* Second Lieutenant William Rhodes-Moorhouse.
* Acting Captain Thomas Riversdale Colyer-Fergusson.
* Acting Captain Walter Napleton Stone.
* Acting Lieutenant Colonel John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker.
* Acting Major George de Cardonnel Elmsall Findlay.

Ivan Lyon, commander of the Jaywickers, was a Harrow grad and NOT even mentioned in the "List of Old Harrovians" wiki entry.



This has been remedied thanks to yours truly.

coolbert.