The Legendary ‘Gunner’
Dave
Littlewood (1958 - 1964) has very strong memories of Gunner Wright,
both good and bad.
Love Him or Loathe Him, "Gunner"
was a Legend
No question – love him or loath him (most, I believe, inclined
towards the latter view) – Frank ‘Gunner’ Wright was a legend.
Just a look was enough to strike fear into all but the most valiant.
I remember as a First Year at Trinity in 1959, some poor teacher
trying to get an assembly full of frolicsome teenagers to be quite.
But then a deathly hush suddenly spread round the hall. The reason?
Gunner had appeared (front left of centre) and just stood there
looking like a giant bat in his teaching gown with his eye fixed on
(it seemed) everyone. He would follow the same tradition every
morning. If anyone dared to talk after he appeared, he would take it
as a personal insult on his authority and dire retribution would
swiftly overtake the offender.
In my early years at Trinity, ‘Buzzer’ would bounce in to take
assembly once Gunner had got the necessary order. Throughout the
hymn Gunner would be casting his eagle eye round in the hope of
detecting the least misbehaviour or any irregulation in school
uniform. I remember at the end of one assembly him rising to his
feet, pointing to some kid and yelling: “You! Pink shirt! Go to my
office at once!” The unfortunate youth obeyed with his face as pink
as his shirt.
In later years, Gunner himself would often take assembly. If
irritated, he would stop the hymn and chasten us for our lack of
volume in praising the Almighty. “If your singing does not improve,
we will all come back at four o’clock for a practice!” To our
youthful hearts, it was not the fear of God that made us sing
lustily, but the fear of the dark spectre glaring from the front.
It was the same during the rehearsals for that loathsome
tradition called ‘Speech Day’. Singing the national anthem was
customary and Gunner was in charge of the practice. After the first
run-through we would brace ourselves for the dreadful outpouring of
wrath, usually expressed in the words: “I have never heard such
disgraceful, pathetic singing in my life! You sound as if you were
ashamed of your country! I tell you, there may be better countries
in the world than this but there are a jolly sight worse! Sing it
better or we stay here all lunch-time and practice!” As he said this
every year, we often wondered whether he had a script for it.
At the end of assembly Gunner would sometimes hand out words of
rebuke or warning to miscreants at present undetected. I remember
him saying, “We appear to have in our midst some stupid oaf who
thinks it funny to loosen the wheel nuts on other people’s bikes. I
tell you that if he is found, things will go hard for him.” Then the
voice lowered with terrible menace: “Very hard indeed!”
He was Very Non-PC (Good)
On more than one occasion when a mess had been made in the boys’
toilets, he would keep all the lads behind and tell us that,
although most of us were decent boys, we had in our midst some
“guttersnipes, slum-dwellers, pig-sty people from pig-sty homes who
have made a disgusting mess in the boys’ toilets!” Then followed a
general summary of what would happen to the culprits if they were
found. I wonder how that would go down in today’s PC society. Would
he be had up for psychologically disturbing the kids?
 Gunner
would not allow bullying in the school, maybe because he himself
wished to remain unchallenged in the role. In the First Year we had
been picking on some poor lad and his mother had complained. Gunner
came in and told us we were making the kid’s life a misery and he
had a list of names of those involved. He held up a piece of paper –
it was probably blank but it struck terror into our young hearts –
and then gave a chilling pronouncement: “This will cease!” He then
strode out, leaving us with palpitating hearts and sick stomachs.
Getting sent outside the classroom for misbehaviour could provoke
great anxiety as to whether Gunner was on one of his round-ups.
Rumour had it if he was in a particularly bad mood he’s go round
looking for such miscreants to take to his office and whack! Or (as
he got older and less vigorous) he would make an offender write out
three copies of the school rules. I remember Doughy Baker throwing
someone out of his lesson (literally). The lad was sitting on the
steps of the music room taking the sun when someone sitting by the
window gave a delighted laugh: “Gunner’s just collected him!” The
lad came back crestfallen having been told by Gunner: “Write out
three copies of the school rules. It will only take you about six
hours. And don’t forget, if there is one spelling mistake, one
punctuation error, one word out of place, you will write them out
all again!”
He Must Have Had a Slightly More Subtle Approach for Teachers
Talking of Doughy Baker, I remember him holding a singing class
for General Studies which quickly developed into something
resembling a local pub sing-along (though without the alcohol).
Another prefect and myself were standing just down the hallway
listening to the raucous strains emanating from the music room when
Gunner came out of his office and looked down the corridor with a
glare that I thought would bring the paint off the music room door.
The other prefect quietly said to me: “I don’t think we’ll hear that
again!” And we didn’t!
Gunner’s whacking methods were also the stuff of legend, although
I never (thankfully) had personal experience. It was said that he
made the miscreant bend over and then took a run-up. One youth who
always seemed to be getting the cane used to come out and jump up
and down afterwards to ease the agony of a Gunner special. If
sparing the rod is spoiling the child, Gunner made sure there were
few spoiled children at Trinity!
Another of Gunner’s methods of instilling discipline (and all his
discipline came through fear) was through beating around the head.
Such clubbing was not usually that hard (although he did once knock
a kid half way up the stairs!) but instilled a sense of fear as to
what might follow. I can remember a Latin lesson where the
ineffectual ‘Ned’ Bennet was away. The young lady teacher who
substituted set us some work and told us that “Mr Wright will be
along soon to check what you’ve done.” Taking this as an idle threat
we continued with other homework until – horror of horrors – Gunner
entered the room. He must have seen me frantically shuffling books
so he came up with slow, firm steps, stood behind me and said: “What
does that word mean?” Of course, my mind went a complete blank and
to give aid to my mental process Gunner repeatedly clubbed me on the
back of the head with exhortations to “Think! Think!”
Fortunately, I managed to bring to mind the meaning of the word
before I was knocked completely senseless, but we then had the rest
of the lesson with Gunner, who soon found out our lack of linguistic
skill with Latin verbs. I remember him yelling, “I have a boy in the
first year who could decline that!” I’ll bet he had! Probably lived
in fear of his life, poor thing! I can honestly say in that short
lesson Gunner wreaked more destruction than most of his
contemporaries could manage in a lifetime.
The class I was in was fortunate not to have Gunner teach them,
but I recall my friend saying that his whole week (indeed, whole
existence) used to revolve around the double period Gunner had them
for French on a Friday afternoon. He would hand out homework with
the words: “This will be done or your life will not be worth
living!” The problem was, you knew he was serious!
Noisy classes which were out of order would suddenly freeze into
silence if Gunner walked in. I remember sitting next to ‘Buzz’
Wesley in the sixth form listening to a class on the floor above
(obviously teacherless) making one hell of a racket. We were
wondering as prefects whether to go up and shut them up when the
noise was replaced by a deathly hush. Buzz said to me, “Gunner’s
just walked in there, I bet!” Sure enough, we soon heard his dulcet
tones of rebuke followed by the sound of heads being slapped.
Don't Waste My Time Boy
One day a particularly unfortunate youth thought his watch had
been nicked from his pocket in the changing rooms. Gunner was called
and told all the boys to search for the watch, which took some time.
He then said he was going to have each boy searched to find out who
the thief was. However, he said to the boy concerned, “Before we do
that, check again to make sure the watch is really missing.” The boy
obeyed and to his horror found the watch in a coat pocket he hadn’t
looked in.
There was a terrible moment of silence. Then Gunner said in his
most menacing tone: “You have wasted twenty minutes of my time – and
twenty minutes of these boys’ time. There is one word for you – A
DRIP!” With which exclamation he gave the poor kid a smack round the
head which knocked him half way up the stairs before striding
wrathfully back to his office.
Amidst all the mayhem he created, Gunner did sometimes display a
certain grim humour. When I was in the fourth year, we had a lad we
nicknamed ‘Will’. It was customary to bump people on their birthday
and as a certain ‘Will’ Shakespeare was 400 years old that year we
decided to bump Will in celebration. Unfortunately it tore his coat
irreparably. When Gunner found out about it we thought they’d be a
row, but he took it as a schoolboy joke and suggested we have a
whip-round for a new jacket for Will, which we did.
He didn’t realize that such bumping was part of the unofficial
curriculum, so it soon happened that another lad’s jacket was
ripped. Gunner came in to see us. “I come to you in the role of
public benefactor,” he said. “Not many of you know me in that role.”
He then told us that the continuance of bumping was likely to become
a very costly pastime for us all, in view of the number of jackets
being ripped. He then ended with a menacing: “This will cease!” And,
of course, it did.
He Had Been Feared, But in Hindsight.........
Gunner was the schoolmaster kids lived in mortal fear of during
their time at the school, but he was always the first teacher you
wanted to see when you paid the school a visit after you have left.
He was, in fact, quite genial in a grim sort of way. I used to bump
into him occasionally as he kept one of the allotments which backed
on to my parents’ house. The last time I saw him he had long been
retired. He told me he never went to Trinity as he could not bear to
see what had happened to the place after it went comprehensive.
For all his fierceness, there was a certain nobility about Gunner
that earned the respect, if not the liking, of most kids in the
school. He was a man for whom slackness and ill discipline were an
anathema. He had obviously got to where he was by hard work and
expected everyone else to do the same. I remember a painful
interview I had with him in the sixth form when I had failed an
English test (through sheer lack of effort) which was required by
some universities. He asked me, “Do you want to push a button and
pull a lever all your life?”
As I look back 40 years later, Gunner is the schoolmaster of whom
I have the most vivid memories, although I never had him teach me
(thank goodness!) on a regular basis. The cartoonist, the late Carl
Giles, said he used to look back on his old schoolmaster, the
terrifying ‘Mr Chalk’ of his cartoons, with a mixture of fear and
affection – the fear of his discipline, yet affection and gratitude
for the discipline he instilled into those under his charge.
Janet Facer remembers "Gunner" actually returning to the school
in 1975 [read]
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