The Harrovian 27th July 1933

On 3st July Colonel Ozanne gives up his command of the Officer Training Corps (OTC) the efficiency of which has been maintained at a high standard during the past six years.

Several changes have been made by him in administration. The companies are now commanded by Under Officers and as much responsibility as possible is handed over to them. Recruits are no longer trained by the Sergeant-Instructors.

All recruits join the OTC in the Summer term and are formed into house squads which are taught squad and arms drill by the NCOs who will be commanding the house platoons in the following term.

These NCOs are taken by the Sergeant-Instructors each week at NCOs parade and at the weekly parades instruct their own squads with very little assistance. Thus the future platoon commander obtains a good knowledge of the management of a platoon and has only himself to blame if his recruits are not up to standard.

Colonel Ozanne has also shown great enthusiasm for the School shooting. He has seldom been absent from a match or practice shoot at Bisley where his capable coaching has been much appreciated. The Miniature Range Club which meets one evening each week during the two Winter terms is the Colonel's own child and week after week he has worked at these evening shoots to raise the standard of our shooting.

Although he has not had the satisfaction of producing the Ashburton winners, he has always seen the Eight placed within the first dozen, a record unequalled by any other school. In 1931 the Eight won the Cusack-Smith Cup and in 1932 the Eastern Command Cadet Challenge Shield. At the Sussex Rifle Association meeting we were second in the Public Schools competition in 1932 and again this year over thirty schools competing at each competition.

I feel sure that all members of the OTC and Shooting Club will remember Colonel Ozanne with affection and wish him and Mrs Ozanne many happy days.

In 1928 some Harrow School pupils, led by Terrance Rattigan, complain to Harold Ozanne about excessive Cadet Force Parades;

… some intelligent boys developed ideological doubts about compulsory militarism. At the beginning of Norwood's term, a monitor refused to attend parade claiming he was a conscientious objector.

More serious, because more public, were the complaints about excessive drill made to the new OTC commander, Colonel Harold Ozanne, early in 1928. Terence Rattigan, in his third year at The Park, passed the story to his then lover, Geoffrey Gilbey, racing correspondent of the Daily Express, adding that some boys had threatened not to parade.

The ensuing publicity caused a tremendous row until Rattigan confessed he had been the source of the story, after which the outrage abated. Rattigan was probably not expelled because of his useful combination of academic ability and promise as a batsman.

The objections to excessive Corps did not disappear. In the winter of 1929-30 the Harrovian carried a heated correspondence on this issue stimulated by a detailed attack on the practical and legal basis of compulsory Corps by a boy calling himself 'Sufferer' who made the neat debating point that His Majesty's Government was spending £1,100,000 on the League of Nations but £150,000 nationally on the OTC.

The real target was the second parade on Friday lunchtimes as much as compulsion. 'Sufferer' followed this up early in 1930 with another letter advocating voluntary Corps; this time he was joined by a supportive letter from Rattigan who, having opened the batting at Lord's the previous July, must have regarded himself as invulnerable.

Rattigan's signed letter may have been a bluff and he was 'Sufferer'. This is suggested by the acid reposte of 'Eupy' to the first 'Sufferer' letter, accusing the author of uncertain gender, effeminism acting as an unsubtle code for homosexuality, Rattigan's uninhibited sexual activity being widely known.

'Sufferer' shared Rattigan's views and interest in history. The authorities bore down with ponderous fury through Ozanne's rebuttal of 'Sufferer's' claim that compulsion was illegal without an active Conscription Act in 1929, the Colonel citing numerous Militia Acts to prove his point. This failed to defuse the discontent. Rattigan, arguing that it was absurd for boys to be forced to drill on Sundays, as some houses insisted, while not being permitted to play games such as squash or fives, continued to write letters to the Harrovian as well as one to The Times. The latter was noticed by Stanley Baldwin. A bit of an explosion, leading to widespread press coverage and questions in the House, was caused by a petition dated 28 May 1930, claiming to bear 400 signatures of Harrovian NCOs and cadets, addressed to John Bostock, an officer in the Corps and at the Head Master's. This declared opposition to more than one parade a week, claiming that no other similar schools had as many.

Parades “had transformed an institution necessary for discipline and training into a military torture, a thing to be dreaded and avoided and now condemned”. The petitioners called for 'a reduction to one parade a week to abolish this hatred and restore success, so essential to its success. The protest ringleaders were three Elmfieldians, C. D. Yarrow, P. G. Roberts, and l. M. Carlisle. Their stance was against the military obsession, not for pacifism; Yarrow was wounded at Dunkirk and Roberts, a future Conservative MP, became a major in the Coldstream Guards.

The authorities, faced with questions of Harrovians' patriotism and loyalty as well as implied criticism of the management, counter-attacked, although it took them a month to come up with a strategy.

Ozanne denounced the petition as a fake, the line wavering between accusing them of obtaining signatures by concealing the nature of the protest and that the signatures were forged. The Petition still survives in the school archives in an unconsidered envelope.

Some signatures look genuine and are accompanied by pertinent comments