This is a model of a second world war frigate, made with infinite patience from balsa wood. It's small, just 13cm long, and very fragile - hence it's preserved in what was a plastic pen case. I have kept it all these years as a reminder of someone who was kind to a rather lost small boy.
Mr Corbett was my history teacher at Glengorse. I wasn't happy at the school but he seemed to be understanding, which many of the staff were not. He was also prepared to spend time with the boys. Working under his supervision a group of us built models of some of Nelson's fleet at the battle of Trafalgar.
During the war he had served in the RN in corvettes, the smallest warships to protect the Atlantic convoys against U-boat attack. Conditions on those ships, particularly in bad weather, must have been appalling. Yet he seemed to have happy memories of his time at sea, and spent his spare hours making carefully scaled models of British warships. He built up a fleet of them - battleships, aircraft carriers, destroyers - and I used to tell him how superb I thought they were. So when, at the age of thirteen, I left to progress to public school, he gave me one of the models.
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