The Headmaster gave this speech during the 2025 Sutton Grammar School Remembrance Service on 11th November.

Each year, we hear the names of fallen Sutton Grammar students in this Remembrance assembly. But in recent years, we’ve told some of their stories in more detail, to help you connect your experience of school to theirs, and perhaps to help you better understand the gravity of the sacrifice they made.

We feel this has been beneficial, but it’s difficult to choose the stories we tell. No one story is more valid, more powerful than another. It can feel a little arbitrary selecting one name from the dozens we hear. But I guess that’s how those connected to the school during the wars felt too. Some of their school friends died whilst some lived, with little rhyme or reason to those differing fates. Mere yards could have dictated whether a Suttonian lived or died, and whether their names would forever be read on this sombre roll call of the dead.

Ernest James Coleman’s name, will be read today.

He was born in 1899, the year this school was founded. He lived in Epsom with his mother and father, Martha and James. They lived at 124 Lower Court Road, with his brother Lawrence and sister Gwendoline. He was a keen cricketer; here he is pictured with his school team in 1914. This was the year war broke out, and I’m sure as he strolled onto the cricket pitch with his friends, the battlefields of Europe felt a long way away. He was, by all accounts, a fine player. In a game against Sutton Scouts, the match report singles him out for praise in helping bowl the opposition out for just 58 runs. And in a victory against the Old Boys of the school, “Coleman’s 39 runs were obtained by forceful cricket”, which surely shows he had an eye for a boundary. He was his form’s sports captain and his written report in The Suttonian declares them victors of House cricket in the summer of 1914.

And yet, there were elements of school he did not seem to enjoy. The headmaster, E H Hensley, commented on his school report that “he did not take his work seriously enough. He has considerable ability, but scarcely seems to recognise the importance of doing his work well now, if he is to secure success in the future.” There are plenty of you listening today, who will have heard similar at parents’ evenings I’m sure. So, when war broke out, it was perhaps no surprise he wanted to join up.

In a letter to his father he wrote:

“Dear Dad, I have definitely decided to join the army. I have had a good deal of trouble at school with various masters and I am sick of it. If I stay on, I shall not be able to take any interest in my work and it will only be a waste of time.”

He also kept in touch with the school and wrote to them in September 1915. He began:

“Dear boys, I suppose you will not quite have forgotten me, and I thought you might be interested in a soldier’s life. I enlisted on June 8th in The Rifle Brigade, a regiment to be proud of – and was sent to Winchester on 10th. We were only there four days but in that time we were served with all our clothing and had several hours of drill. On the whole, we had a very easy time, but we were told that Winchester was only a nursery compared to what was to come.”

After a few months, he was transferred to the Machine Gun Corps as a corporal. In Februrary 1916, he left for France, where he spent time at the Somme. After this, he received his third stripe, in preference to a commission he was offered. In January, he had ten days leave back home before returning to France. At the Battle of Arras, he was highly commended for his bravery. But, as with so many brave young men, that courage alone did not save him. On 28th April 1917, he was shot by a German sniper, whilst looking for a place to position his guns. His name is on the Arras Memorial.

* * *

This evening, approximately 350 cadets will form up on the yard to take part in the school’s Combined Cadet Force. Our CCF is one of the most enthusiastically attended extra-curricular opportunities and thousands of pupils, past and present, consider it one of their very favourite things about attending this school. 

The cadet corps, as it was then known, started in 1915 and is now 110 years old. It was a response to the outbreak of war and it was instigated at this time for a starkly practical purpose: “to teach the young how to shoot”. Within weeks the corps had sixty recruits, paying five shillings per term subscription, and two masters to act as officers. To those of you who form up on parade later today to take part in the CCF’s memorial service, think back to your forbears who did the same, but with combat a very real and grave prospect for them.

In 1975, a book called A Small School in The Great War, a history of Suttonians during World War 1, was published. The final lines of that book ask: “It may sound ludicrous to this age, but what does the modern Englishman believe in that is bigger than himself?”

Think about this yourself today: in a world full of noise, what causes do you believe truly matter? And how are you going to stand up for them?