(We are grateful to the Reverend Bob Homer for this contribution.)

I have a little book entitled The Art of Coarse Rugby. It is dedicated to those enthusiastic but inept souls who turn out, Saturday after Saturday, to play for the 'Extra-fifth' XVs of moderate clubs. Well, some of my rowing, to adapt the title, was 'Coarse Rowing'. How else do you classify clinging to the protective piles of Iffley Weir on a February day while the flooded stream smashes a decent clinker eight to pieces beneath you and forces you to race in a dreadful old tub, descending a place every day (six, at Oxford, pre-War)? How else do you classify endeavouring to stroke six other lightish people with a clumsy giant of a six-foot-six and thirteen and a half stones in the middle of the boat? It must have been the only crew in history with the de facto stroke rowing 'five'. How else do you classify turning up to coach a college first boat with a 'six' who moves a wall of water and then spoils it all by getting tied up at the finish? I observed his huge thigh muscles and liberated him promptly by having a couple of washers put under his rigger. No-one else had thought of it and the crew looked on me as a sort of rowing genius and were rewarded with a couple of bumps at the top of the third division in the Eights. For them it was the equivalent of cracking four minutes for the mile.

An aspect of rowing, however, that makes it different from other sports and games is that 'rabbits' and stars rub shoulders together, racing over the same water, using the same boat-tents at the same regattas and 'Head' races. Consequently some of my treasured memories are of great people met and seen and, of them all, I would put at the top of the list Jock Lewes, an Australian, who was President of the O.U.B.C. in 1936-'37.

For Oxonians the 'twenties and 'thirties had been such a dismal period when nothing seemed to go right. Good Oxford crews who would have won previous races always seemed to meet even better Cambridge boats. In 1936 the Isis ran a little competition to forecast the winner, distance and time of the race, and, from all the undergraduate entries, only one forecast an Oxford win, so they gave him the prize! That was when Lewes took over. Oxford had been beaten thirteen times in a row, and he had nine Blues to choose from. But they were all beaten Blues. In practice he was rowing 'two' and when they got to Putney he felt (mistakenly, some people think) that the boat was running against him and took the decision to drop himself. And a few days later his crew stemmed the Cambridge tide. I can remember so clearly seeing his rather short, but utterly determined figure stroking the House and fighting off a bump all the way up the barges to the finish. Gallant all the way; and gallant to the end of his life, which he laid down with the Long Range Desert Group operating behind German lines in North Africa.

In my mind's eye I always associate the great Conrad Cherry with Lewes. I call him 'the great' because he was - very tall, with a long straight back and a sweeping 'cavalry' moustache. His style was so perfect that when Brasenose came down to the river lesser crews easied and drew into the bank, just so that people could watch Cherry. He followed Lewes as President, winning again, and he was killed on flying training with the R.A.F. in 1940.

For guts I would nominate T.A.Brocklebank, the Cambridge stroke. I never met him but he fell in the water not far from where I was, with other Monktonians. It was Henley, 1931. He was sculling against a much bigger man, Pearce, of Canada, who won the Diamonds, and at the bottom of the Enclosure he was two or three lengths down. Then he put in a terrific spurt and one could see his bows shooting up at every stroke - until he suddenly stopped and fell out of his boat. He had simply rowed himself right out. (Some people said it was because he had been on that year's Everest expedition.) The Umpire's launch had to stop and pick him up, together with his boat and sculls. Fifty years later I recalled the incident in conversation with his contemporary, H.R.N.Rickett. 'Yes', said Rickett, 'There wasn't half a row about that. Thames Conservancy should have been on hand to rescue him. The Umpire's launch shouldn't have had to stop!'

The most disappointed old, old Blue I ever met: he rowed for Oxford, just once, in 1903. That was the year the starting pistol (never used again) hung fire and Cambridge, who had their blades squared, were simply pulled off the stake-boat into an unassailable three-length lead! 1903, what a long time ago. When I met him, forty years ago, he was an old gentleman, delighted to find a younger man who spoke the same language.

But I do wish I could have met his contemporary who twice rowed 'seven' for Cambridge and named his Scottish home Bowside, because his son was a good wartime friend. It was in November 1943 that he and I had the best leave ever - just six days in Darjeeling. We played tennis at the club every morning and we played squash every evening; we had lots of good food; we had fires in our bedrooms; and one morning we rose at four-thirty and climbed the last bit of nearby Tiger Hill (8,000 ft.) in the dark to see the sunrise over the Himalayas - all the way from the majestic cone of Kanchenjunga to storm-swept Everest, a hundred and twenty miles away (the 'Far Pavilions'). There was already a little party of Gurkha women and children at the top of the hill when Ted and I arrived; and as they turned their faces to the rosy glow that crept down those snowy peaks which seemed to be floating on the dark sea of mist which engulfed the great valleys they were on their knees saying their prayers. No wonder; it was a sight, once seen, never ever to be forgotten. Ted had been at Eton and rowing was one of the bonds between us. He was the quartermaster, and I was the adjutant, of a detatchment taken out of a big reinforcement camp for what was called 'Aid to the Civil Power'. In fact I have no Indian blood on my conscience. Because we were simply known to be 'in being' there were no riots and there was no shooting in the province of Bihar in those politically troubled times.

But, back to the important story about my friend. The camp we were in was pretty miserable. Hardly a British soldier had been seen in the area since the days of Clive and we were all in tents and a few bashas with rudimentary facilities. Some chaps got 'jungle-sores'. Lots of men suffered from what soldiers of various decades have called 'Gippy-tummy', 'Delhi-belly', 'The curse of the Pharaohs', or 'Galtieri's Revenge'. We suspected the latrines; D.D.T. had not been invented and the Indian 'sweeper' did not seem up to his job. Then one hot afternoon when several of us were sitting in the basha writing letters or idly listening to someone's wind-up gramophone with Anne Shelton singing 'Green Eyes', Ted appeared, looking a bit embarrassed, and apologised for being a bit smelly as he headed for a bath and a change. In due course we found out what he had been up to. He had been giving the poor little sweeper a personal demonstration of exactly how to deal with the source of our troubles.

I think of Francesco Bemadone and the leper. And I am sure St. Francis knew he was doing something remarkable; but I am sure that Ted saw nothing remarkable at all in an Old Etonian whose father had rowed for Cambridge getting down to a disgusting job side by side with a Hindu outcaste. Not much to do with rowing, but I feel that it is a 'reminiscence' worth recording.