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The memorial and roll of honour for the Old Blackheathans, Blackheath, South London; the school closed in 1907, and the plaque is now in St Margaret's Church, Lee, which, although in Lewisham, is on the same road that the school was.




The roll of honour is particularly interesting because of a name which isn't there - Captain Ernest Dunlop Swinton, later to reach the rank of colonel. The following article appeared in The Cheltenham Looker-on, Saturday 7th November 1914.



The following very interesting article has been published in The Observer, to which excellent journal we give full acknowledgement: -
It is now an open secret that "Eye-Witness," the pleasantly garrulous chronicler of military matters, who wanders from the "Nut" in warfare to the vagaries of "Jack Johnsons," is Colonel Ernest Dunlop Swinton, D.S.O., of the Royal Engineers. He is only just on the wrong side of forty, a man of spare figure and with a full measure of the buoyancy of youth. He belongs to an essentially military family, for though his father was an Indian Judge, he was at his post during the Mutiny; Colonel Swinton's eldest brother fell in one of the many Indian frontier campaigns; the next brother is in the Indian Medical service, and has spent enough years in that country to qualify for admission to the select body of confirmed Anglo-Indomaniacs who inhabit Ootacamund while the youngest brother has served his country also in different climes.

He himself is an old Public School Boy, with a record of Rugby, Cheltenham, and Blackheath Proprietary School, the last named an establishment now defunct, but once productive of a great school of "Rugger" footballers, amongst whom Colonel Swinton, despite his slight build, stood high. He had always a taste for writing. He was the main contributor to the Blackheath School Magazine, and he developed an easy penchant for conferring nicknames on all his fellow boys, a faculty which makes one believe he has probably fathered some of the appellations which have been adopted by the men whose doings he describes. He had high honours at the "shop" at Woolwich, and much of his earlier, as well as his later, Army work was done at Chatham.

His great chance came in the South African War, and he took it. Belonging to the corps of "Bridge Builders," otherwise the "Railway Pioneer Regiment," he found that the struggle provided him with unlimited scope, and if one wants to see what is apparently in parts almost an autobiographical note he should read "The Joint in the Harness," a remarkable little story, prophetic in its nature so far as the use of aeroplanes is concerned, which he published anonymously in later years in a volume to which from the first narrative, suggestive of Ladysmith, he gave the name of "The Green Curve." He finished his work on the Orange River and then pushed north, taking part in many an exciting little "scrap" on the way to Johannesburg, and then at length on the Rand he became, at one time, chiefly responsible for the maintenance of order.

South Africa taught him war in its reality, and he was one of those who profited by its lessons, while he could in addition show how they were to be learned. No little book has demonstrated this more than "The Defence of Duffer's Drift," which, taking as its hero a "nut" lieutenant, one Backsight Forethought, Esq., showed how such a position should not be defended and how it could be. Colonel Swinton, as usual, writing anonymously, styled the little brochure "A Few Experiences in Field Defence for Detached Posts, which may prove useful in our next War," and, with a note of sardonic playfulness which is never absent from his work, he dedicated "this tale of a dream to the 'gilded popinjays' and 'hired assassins' of the British nation, especially those who are now knocking at the door - to wit, the very junior." It was, in short, a very serious little treatise, despite its light and airy garb, and it attracted much notice. Anyway, one soon found the author lecturing in this country to army students, and few professional classes have been more popular. Time passed away - Colonel Swinton did not attend the Staff College, for the same reasons which have deterred many others - but his ability was never questioned, and his appointment as Assistant Secretary and Librarian of the Imperial Committee of Defence was essentially good from the national standpoint. With the outbreak of the war he was soon in harness again.

You can any day just about see him moving along the British lines in a motor-car. He is enjoying himself, and his letters show it.

'Eye-Witness' was his byline when working for the army as official British war correspondent on the Western Front.

www.firstworldwar.com/bio/swinton.htm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Swinton

Did he decline to have his name included, or was he deliberately omitted? Hard to think that his name could have been accidentally overlooked. Perhaps the 19 names who served are the men who paid for the plaque. But if Swinton's name is missing, how many other names could also be missing, for whatever reasons?