WWI | Oxford's Losses in the Great War

One of two paving stones in Oxford for Noel
Chavasse, awarded two Victoria Crosses for bravery,
 the only person in WWI to receive two VCs. 

November 11, 2018–As the centennial of Armistice Day is celebrated today (renamed Veteran's Day in the United States), Oxford University’s great contributions to the Great War effort are being widely noted.

Corpus Christi lost nearly half of the undergraduates admitted between 1912 and 1914; losses at other colleges were not far behind.

In total, 351 Corpus students and alumni  saw active service. Of these men, 90 were killed, one-fourth of those serving. 

These losses, according to the College, were the highest of the Oxford colleges, because Corpus had a high proportion of “public school” (elite British schools, mostly boarding schools) graduates. 

Recruits from Oxford colleges were overwhelmingly public school men who were quickly commissioned as junior officers. Their lives as leaders in the front line were generally short. (During the Normandy invasion, the half-life of American first lieutenants was the shortest of any rank.)

Of the 90 Corpus alumni casualties, 15 had earned an order (two Victoria Crosses, nine Military Crosses and four Mentions in Dispatches) during their World War I service. Aside from Corpus Christi College alumni who died, two Corpus staff members were killed in the war, A. Clifford and H.G. Ward. https://www.ccc.ox.ac.uk/Roll-of-Honour-1914-1918-Introduction/

The only person in World War I to receive two Victoria Crosses was an alumnus of Trinity College, Oxford – Noel Chavasse, a fearless medic. The bravery of the young men who went to war is as unquestionable as the folly of the war itself.

World War I is a reminder that the symbols of Oxford’s colleges and halls were born out of wars, and the needs of heralds and soldiers to identify the location of their leaders. Coats of arms became attached to colleges. They were often the shields of the founders, or of people the founders looked to for protection – a saint or king. Stories about the colleges help make each college and hall a special place. My collection of the arms and stories became a book, Oxford College Arms (links to Amazon).

As an American, I am asked how I became interested in Oxford’s arms. It began in Yorkshire when at ten years of age I was sent off to Ampleforth College and ate my meals in the Great Hall of Gilling Castle. Its giant stained-glass windows featured the shields and stories of the Fairfax family. General Thomas Fairfax, cousin of the Gilling Castle Fairfaxes, was the man who created Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army and invaded Oxford to hunt down Charles I.

Trinity College, gold field with blue chevron
with four golden fleurs-de-lis on it, with three
langued blue griffins, two and one,
counterchanged in pale. Shield by Lee
Lumbley, © 2018 by Boissevain Books.

When I came to live in Trinity College in the early 1960s, I enjoyed trying to interpret the coats of arms that appeared on buildings, dining accessories, and clothing. Trinity’s arms are those of Sir Thomas Pope, who became wealthy while dissolving monastic colleges for Henry VIII. Under Mary Tudor, he refounded a college to ensure that he would leave behind someone to pray for him. Trinity’s three birds with the big ears are griffins, which have the head and wings of an eagle (king of the air) on the body of a lion (king of the land). Another fascinating bird featured on college arms is the martlet. A flock of four or five of them appear around a cross on the shield of University College, one of Oxford’s three oldest colleges. This coat of arms was attributed posthumously to St Edward the Confessor. The cross at the center of the shield shows that St Edward was saintly, while the martlets show that he was learned. The martlet is always shown legless and footless, so it can’t perch. It is like an aircraft without landing gear and has to stay aloft. In this way, the bird symbolizes thinkers who can never rest, because the answers of those who became before are constantly challenged. Coats of arms are brands. Oxford’s communities need an identity, and a common shield provides it. A deep dive into colleges’ coats of arms is a better guide to visiting Oxford than a GPS. Colleges can return to some of their historic themes when least expected. After World War II, new Oxford colleges were needed to provide the common living experience to burgeoning numbers of students in graduate and professional specialties. At first, it was assumed that new University-created colleges, like Kellogg and St Cross, would not need a coat of arms. But students and dons missed the heraldry when they competed in intercollegiate programs. The University discovered that it needed arms to identify each college in its calendar. So the new colleges created their own arms. I wrote about their choices for the Oxford alumni magazine in 2015.

Corpus Christi College, with vulning Pelican
("in its piety") feeding its chicks. Shield by
Lee Lumbley, © 2018 by Boissevain Books.

For the book, I have tried to wring truth out of the many college shields. Are these arms relics of feudalism, sexism, superstition, racism? Assuredly.

Do they also tell the story of how generations gradually escaped some of these suffocating prisons? Yes.

For example, imagine what a great leap into the future was made by Bishop Oldham of Exeter and his colleague Bishop Foxe of Winchester, when they founded Corpus Christi College. From the beginning, as a great departure from existing practice, they decided in 1517 to open its doors to non-monastic scholars.

The left third of its shield shows another bird, the pelican, with blood dripping from its beak. The medieval world thought that pelicans poked their beaks down to pierce their breasts and feed their young with blood. It was called a “vulning” (wounding) pelican, “in its piety” – i.e., sacrificing its blood for its chicks. This is, of course, a metaphor for Jesus. Today, we know that a pelican puts its beak down on its chest not to wound itself but to push up food from the pouch below its beak. We can also interpret the message of the pelican in a more secular sense as one of a caring parent. “Oxford College Arms” was recently reviewed with enthusiasm by the online Oxford Alumni Magazine QUAD and was the subject of a "Guestwords" in the East Hampton, NY Star.