The Birth of Bangor Grammar School Combined Cadet Force (CCF)

For over eighty years there has been a cadet presence at Bangor Grammar School reflecting the constant flow of young men who, for well over one and a half centuries, have gone forth from this place to serve their country in the armed forces of the Crown in times of war and in times of peace.

The Army Cadet Force in Bangor Grammar School (and the Combined Cadet Force which succeeded it) is part and parcel of the ACF/CCF nationwide, the most recent manifestation of the British cadet movement which had originated during the Crimean War just at the time Bangor Endowed School was founded – an interesting coincidence.

In 1941 a unit of the ATC (Air Training Corps) was formed at Bangor Grammar School but in less than a year had combined with the Technical College to create a “town” unit of the same organisation. Two years later a detachment of the Army Cadet Force was formed in Bangor as part of the County Down Battalion and some boys from the school enrolled. Possibly inspired by these developments the headmaster of the day, Mr Maurice Wilkins, agreed in 1945 to the formation of a School Detachment known as a ‘closed unit,’ as it was not open to boys outside the school. Its first Officer Commanding was Captain T.A. Armstrong. He was succeeded by Captain Johnson when he returned from war.

By 1948 there were 35 cadets, and an annual report in the A5 size Gryphon that was eleven lines long. Fifty years later in 1998 there were 200 cadets including 72 girls and the report ran for 15 A4 pages!

1971 saw the arrival of a second officer in the Detachment. Lieutenant Raymond Mowat joined Captain Bill Langtry, boosting the Unit’s morale considerably. Raymond taught Geography in BGS and of course went on to become the first CCF Contingent Commander.

It was in 1971 also that events took a fateful turn when in company with all cadet units in the Province our ACF detachment was forbidden to wear uniform in public following the first outburst of the Troubles. So it was that for over thirty years the cadet units were to fight their own battles of our troubled times – battles of survival in a Province torn apart by internecine war. It should have been a time for the cadet units of whatever “flavour” to pull together for the sake of the movement. However, when a newly appointed member of the teaching staff in 1973, a TA captain with eleven years commissioned service including CCF and UDR, offered his services to the ACF the response was disappointing. He was informed that he must apply formally, be security vetted and if accepted he would revert to Second Lieutenant, losing his seniority in the process. Such a rigid and obstructive attitude did nothing to endear the ACF authorities of that time to the school. Meanwhile in 1974 the ACF report in the Gryphon, recorded the retirement of Captain Langtry and Lieutenant Mowat’s promotion to Captain, Officer Commanding Bangor Grammar School ACF Detachment.

It is to the school’s eternal credit that not only did our cadets, and ex-cadets, continue to serve their country in good citizenship and sound leadership but did so in a most dramatic way. In the midst of the Troubles in 1975 Bangor Grammar School Contingent of the Combined Cadet Force was born from its ATC and ACF predecessors. By then the school had grown to nigh on 900 boys and an ACF detachment simply could not provide enough places to satisfy the growing number of applications. It became clear that the solution was a CCF contingent.

The only CCF Contingent to have been formed in the province over the last fifty years it quickly became the largest Contingent in Ulster and one of the largest in the Kingdom.

The birth of the new unit was not without its difficulties. When the founders applied to London the ACF authorities in Ulster strongly opposed the move mainly because they stood to lose the best ACF detachment in the Armagh and Down Battalion and one of the best in the province. It was also mooted that the political circumstances made the formation of another CCF Contingent in Ulster an unwise act. Why this was they would not say! Certain ACF officers even went so far as to tell the headmaster of the day that it could not be done and that the project would fail. Dr Bob Rogers was not one to have any outsider tell him what to do in his school. There was also found a body of opposition amongst pacifist and nationalist oriented members of the teaching staff. Fortunately, they carried little weight and, in any case, the Joint Cadet Executive in London favoured the change, recognising that the demand for cadet provision in BGS far outstretched the scope of an ACF unit. Above all else there was experienced command provision in the school and good accommodation was immediately available. On 1st November 1975, the headmaster received a letter from the Ministry of Defence authorising the formation of a Contingent of the Combined Cadet Force at Bangor Grammar School.

Of the eighteen Heads of Bangor Grammar School, five have had direct, personal, military connections. Of those one was killed in action during the Great War after leaving the school, (R.H. Ashmore) and another was already a veteran of the Second World War (Lt. Col. Ricketts) when he became Headmaster. Randall Clarke was involved with the CCF at Campbell College and saw his ACF Detachment through much of the Troubles, finally having the pleasure of authorizing the application for a CCF Contingent. Tom Patton was himself a Commander RNR CCF and Stephen Connolly was an ACF cadet while at Foyle College. Of those Headmasters since 1941 it is particularly appropriate here to mention the first, Maurice Wilkins. While the cadets of his ATC and later ACF Detachments were beginning their training, their Headmaster was still making an almost weekly and harrowing pilgrimage to the Spectator offices with obituary tributes, everyone written by himself, for those Old Boys (his boys) who had fought and died for the freedom enjoyed by his and future generations. What anguish Maurice Wilkins must have felt! These young men were only a short time before (in some cases just months) “his boys,” meeting him in School on a daily basis. But his was also the pride that these same boys had not hesitated for a moment. That pride we still feel today.

On a chill December day in 1975 Ulster’s fifth CCF Contingent was vested, over fifty years ago.

The Combined Cadet Force with the other cadet organizations in this country is one of those peculiarly British inventions which numerous other countries (including the USA) have tried to emulate with only partial success and in some cases downright failure. In almost every case the government of the country decided that a cadet force of this kind was a good thing and therefore would be. Nobody bothered to ask the potential cadets! The soul of the Cadet Forces in the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries is their voluntary ethos. They survive and flourish because the Cadet wants them to do so.

With its fellow cadet organisations, the CCF is part of the only movement of its kind in the world which offers a totally unselfish programme of training for young men and women. All that is asked is that each cadet makes a commitment – to his or her own future, whatever path that might take.”

Adapted from the book “A Force of Cadets” (D.B. Greenaway 2006)