Yes­ter­day, we pub­lished the first of two ex­tracts from James Gilman's mem­oirs. In 1941, young James Gilman, with his fa­ther, moth­er and sis­ter, trav­elled from Eng­land to Trinidad, where his fa­ther took up the post of head of the Sal­va­tion Army in that part of the Caribbean and was al­so ap­point­ed civ­il de­fence ad­vis­er to the Gov­er­nor, Sir Be­de Clif­ford (grand­fa­ther to the wife of Britain's present Prime Min­is­ter, David Cameron).

He be­came a pupil at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, re­main­ing there for three years un­til the fam­i­ly re­turned to Eng­land in 1944.

Now 81, he is writ­ing his mem­oirs. Gilman re­cent­ly e-mailed the T&T Guardian a copy of the sec­tion of his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy deal­ing with the per­ilous voy­age to Trinidad and his time here.

On the first day of the school year we'd re­port to our new class­rooms, col­lect our books, an­swer to our names on the reg­is­ter–and then go home! On the last day of each term, while our class teacher sat do­ing re­ports, we'd line up our desks in­to two op­pos­ing rows on ei­ther side of the class­room and spend the day in bat­tle, hurl­ing wa­ter bombs, pa­per darts, cat­a­pult­ed pel­lets, and oth­er pro­jec­tiles at each oth­er, un­der our teacher's benev­o­lent eye, who'd some­times join in with his or her own am­mu­ni­tion.The main, old­est part of the school was a red-brick two-storey build­ing with a cor­ri­dor run­ning along the front of it. It was a school tra­di­tion that on Sat­ur­day morn­ings the ju­nior boys would col­lect to­geth­er on the up­per cor­ri­dor, lay in a huge stock of wa­ter bombs (filled with wa­ter from a tap placed there con­ve­nient­ly for this pur­pose), and hurl these at the sixth-for­m­ers and pre­fects strolling along the bot­tom cor­ri­dor play­ing their own part in this hap­py rit­u­al.

Dur­ing our lunch break the press man would trun­dle his bar­row in­to the school play­ground. In it would lie a huge block of ice, and in his hand a kind of met­al plane, like those used to plane pieces of wood, but mod­i­fied to pro­vide a space above the blade for col­lect­ing ice shav­ings. In re­turn for a pen­ny he'd stroke the ice with his plane, col­lect­ing a mass of shav­ings in­side the in­stru­ment.Tak­ing out the fin­ished block, he'd shake coloured syrup over the re­sul­tant "press," which would then be stuffed in­to our mouths and drib­bled down our chins like vam­pire's blood. It was won­der­ful, like every oth­er as­pect of school life at QRC (known to boys at ri­val schools as "Queen's Rub­bish Cart," or "Queen's Roy­al Cab­bages").Latin was my best sub­ject but one which, sad­ly, was not taught at any of my sub­se­quent schools in Eng­land. Maths was es­pe­cial­ly in­ter­est­ing, as our teacher had a com­plete set of three-di­men­sion­al math­e­mat­i­cal mod­els–globes, pyra­mids, cubes, and the like–which he'd hurl at any pupil giv­ing what he con­sid­ered to be a stu­pid an­swer. As a re­sult, though, we didn't learn a great deal of maths in his class we cer­tain­ly learned how to move quick­ly, sharp­en our phys­i­cal re­spons­es, and erect desk lids at light­ning speed when­ev­er a mis­sile strike was sight­ed.

Ge­og­ra­phy was main­ly an on­go­ing les­son on the na­tions of the British Em­pire, which na­tions, we were shown on a globe, were all coloured red and whose em­pire, we were re­as­sured, was one up­on which the sun nev­er set. Per­haps our teacher should have stud­ied a lit­tle more His­to­ry in her de­gree course, for the sun, even then, was be­gin­ning to cast its dy­ing shad­ow over the red bits on the world map.Eng­lish seemed to be di­vid­ed be­tween the read­ing of books and the learn­ing of po­ems by heart, and a lot of what was called on the timetable "Copy," which con­sist­ed of end­less­ly copy­ing in­di­vid­ual let­ters from print­ed ex­am­ples on each line on every page, to en­sure we were able to write with a leg­i­ble hand. As a left-han­der who there­fore had to push in­stead of pull his hand across the page, I found this more of a drag than most of my fel­lows and–lit­er­al­ly–blot­ted my copy-book on many an oc­ca­sion.Sci­ence was great fun, with plant and an­i­mal life be­ing en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly ex­ter­mi­nat­ed and bod­ies then cut up; Di­vin­i­ty (as Re­li­gious Ed­u­ca­tion was la­belled) was full of Bible sto­ries and moral teach­ings, as be­fit­ted a Church of Eng­land school; and PE was a glo­ri­ous m�l�e of swing­ing on ropes, chas­ing each oth­er around the gym, tightrope walk­ing, rolling on to and over var­i­ous parts of our bod­ies, and cre­at­ing a gen­er­al may­hem great­ly en­joyed by us all. Strange, then, that this sub­ject above all oth­ers was to sub­se­quent­ly prove my down­fall at school lat­er in Eng­land.I made two spe­cial friends at my school. One–whose name sad­ly I can­not now re­call af­ter all these years–was the son of the di­rec­tor of Trinidad's "mad­house," as the asy­lum was known to every­one from the Gov­er­nor down. Liv­ing in a large house on the asy­lum's cam­pus, he in­tro­duced me to two es­sen­tial el­e­ments in every boy's life at that time.

The first was Amer­i­can comics, so dif­fer­ent from Eng­lish ones like my week­ly Cham­pi­on, in that, un­like the lat­ter which con­tained sto­ries ac­com­pa­nied by a few black & white il­lus­tra­tions, these were all pic­tures, and in glo­ri­ous Tech­ni­col­or too. There was Su­per­man, Green Lantern, and The Jus­tice So­ci­ety of Amer­i­ca, a gang of crim­i­nal-bust­ing he­roes who in­clud­ed Hawk, Won­der Woman, Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, and as­sort­ed oth­er weirdies, all tremen­dous grist to the mill of my spark­ing imag­i­na­tion. The sec­ond el­e­ment was that sta­ple of boys' lit­er­a­ture: ad­ven­ture books (as op­posed to comics). Most peo­ple to­day have heard of Big­gles, the Sec­ond World War fly­ing ace and hero­ic cre­ation of Cap­tain WE Johns. My friend, how­ev­er, pos­sessed books fea­tur­ing an even ear­li­er cre­ation of the same au­thor, cast in the same hero­ic mould: Scot­ty of the Roy­al Fly­ing Corps, the First World War fly­ing ace who flew a Sop­with Camel against the likes of Ger­many's Red Baron. Sat­ur­day af­ter­noons spent in the "mad­house" were a mem­o­rable feast of read­ing for two young boys look­ing for their own he­roes in life to em­u­late.

My best friend– one of on­ly two "best friends" I ever had in my school days–was Hen­ry Cooke, the el­dest son of Port-of-Spain's Methodist Min­is­ter, a boy of my own age and in my class at school. Hen­ry and I fit­ted to­geth­er like a lock and key, his key un­lock­ing my own sup­pressed urge for ad­ven­ture so I could fizz like a trail of gun­pow­der and ex­plode in­to ac­tiv­i­ty. At­tached to the Methodist manse in which Hen­ry lived was a size­able patch of un­cul­ti­vat­ed ground known to us all as the hen run. Over­look­ing the road and just in­side the fence was a large tree, in the branch­es of which we built our own tree house from sal­vaged pieces of wood found un­der the manse (which, like all Eu­ro­pean hous­es in the West In­dies, was raised off the ground on stilts some three feet high against in­sect in­fes­ta­tion). Sit­ting up in our eyrie we'd plan the day's ac­tiv­i­ties in be­tween rude­ly mock­ing passers­by, and oc­ca­sion­al­ly hurl­ing lit­tle ex­plo­sive pel­lets at them –twists of pa­per on sale in the shops, en­clos­ing crys­tals which ex­plod­ed with a very sat­is­fy­ing bang up­on im­pact. Some­times there'd be en­coun­ters with oth­er boys from our school, erupt­ing in­to ar­tillery bom­bard­ments from the safe­ty of our tree-house which in­spired re­tal­i­a­tion in kind from our street-lev­el friends.On Sat­ur­day morn­ings we'd all go down to the cin­e­ma in town to watch Mick­ey Mouse and oth­er car­toons to­geth­er with the se­r­i­al, Cap­tain Mar­vel who, with a blood-cur­dling shout of KA­ZOOM!!! would stuff him­self with mirac­u­lous pow­ers and chase the bad­dies out of town and the girl in­to his arms.

Whilst shout­ing en­cour­age­ment to him in re­gard to the for­mer ands boo­ing in re­spect of the lat­ter, we'd while away the dark­ness by fir­ing off pel­lets from elas­tic bands at any­one small­er than our­selves, es­pe­cial­ly girls who, with any luck, could be re­lied up­on to scream most sat­is­fy­ing­ly on be­ing struck. At the end of the show we'd stand for the (British) na­tion­al an­them and then, fil­ing out qui­et­ly past the uni­formed com­mis­sion­aire, make our way to the main road there to lay pen­nies in­side the tram lines, to be sat­is­fy­ing­ly flat­tened when rolled over by these iron mon­sters who, not able to breathe fire at us them­selves, left it to their con­duc­tors to do so. It was all good fun–fun which doesn't seem to come the way of our young coun­ter­parts to­day.

Not all our ac­tiv­i­ties were of a vi­o­lent na­ture, how­ev­er–far from it. Hen­ry and I shared a love of books and, es­pe­cial­ly, of Arthur Ran­some's Swal­lows and Ama­zons se­ries set in the Eng­lish­Lake Dis­trict. We'd spend hours stretched on the floor, por­ing over maps we'd bor­rowed from the li­brary and do­ing our best to match these against the sites men­tioned in the books.

Not hav­ing ac­cess to any lakes or rivers, we trans­ferred our en­thu­si­asm to the roads in­stead, build­ing a boat with wheels that we chris­tened Wild Cat in ho­n­our of Ran­some's cre­ation. Thanks to the push­ing pow­er of our crew–ie Wes­ley and Den­nis–we sailed this right around Cape Horn and back through Pana­ma to Trinidad with a Jol­ly Roger fly­ing at the mast­head and the wheels falling off al­most as of­ten as we did. We solemn­ly formed our­selves in­to two boat­ing com­mands, the Swal­lows rep­re­sent­ed by Hen­ry and the Ama­zons rep­re­sent­ed by my­self. Our two cap­tains com­mu­ni­cat­ed with each oth­er by sem­a­phore sig­nals la­bo­ri­ous­ly writ­ten down on to sheets of pa­per head­ed S.A.F.E#, stand­ing for "Swal­lows & Ama­zons For Ever," which we post­ed to each oth­er by hid­ing them be­hind a loose brick in a wall half-way be­tween our two hous­es. There could be one there to this day.