There was an occasion when our division was before the German onslaught in Greece.
Three Old Boys were marching down the road in the hope of evacuation. They saw a person collapsed on the side of the road. It was George Bertrand, who like many others was suffering from dysentery, a condition causing extreme weakness and sometimes collapse.
One of them spotted who it was and said "It's only George Bertrand, let's leave him".
They kept on marching past him and beyond for about ten yeards when they stopped, and then went back and helped our most distressed George.
It was a grim scene at the evacuation beaches at Calamata in Southern Greece, where retreating soldiers were being ferried out to awaiting ships.
A grim scene. Many of those waiting were lying down saying nothing, hoping that their turn might come.
Down at the water edge one soldier - an Old Boy - spotted that the officer busy on the beach organising the groups entering the boats, was George Bertrand. So above the silence this was heard
"When are you going to start the Flannagan Cup George?"
(To appreciate this you may recall that there was a variety of instruments of torture used by school teachers to inflict pain and suffering upon tender young children. It ranged from leather straps to sand-shoes to machine belting and there was a period when a victim would have to go outside to a certain clump of bamboos and cut himself a cane).
So we return to the evacuation beach at Sfakia and the awaiting troops had just been strafed by an enemy plane.
As the plane departed on wag on the beach, who was one of the officers organising the loading of the boats, called out
"Tell the bastard to go cut a cane George!"