by Stan Eldon
Title page
LIFE ON THE RUN
Stan Eldon
ARTHUR H. STOCKWELL LTD.
Elms Court Ilfracombe Devon
Established 1898
Publisher information
© Stan Eldon, 2002
First published in Great Britain, 2002
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
Arthur H. Stockwell Ltd., bear no responsibility for the accuracy of events recorded in this book.
Dedication
The book is dedicated to my parents, my wife of forty-four years Marion, my family and those women in my life I have mentioned in this book.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the following for the use of photographs, newpaper extracts and cartoons used in this book.
E. D. Lacey, photographer; The Times; The Sunday Times; Daily Express; Sunday Express; The Telegraph; News of the World; London Evening News; Reading Evening Post; Reading Chronicle; Windsor Express; Athletics Weekly; Len Runyard; Keystone Press Agency.
Thanks also to all those who have helped to make my sporting life so interesting and full, and who have directly or indirectly helped me to put this book together.
Foreword
By Len Runyard, formerly Hon. Secretary, Eton AC, Windsor and Eton AC, and Windsor, Slough and Eton AC.
I have much pleasure in writing this foreword to, ‘Life on the Run’. When I joined the Eton AC, over fifty years ago, there was a small band of very enthusiastic young athletes who coped extremely well despite a complete lack of facilities. One of these was the fourteen years old Stan Eldon, a pupil from the Windsor Boys’ Grammar School. Even at this stage of his athletic career, his potential was obviously outstanding, while apart from this, his enthusiasm and dedication to athletics was boundless. Essentially, I remember him as a cooperative, keen and loyal club member and a very generous natured and nice person; he hasn’t changed in the interim!
In 1952 the club moved to Windsor and became Windsor and Eton AC, it was under this name that Stan gained his great athletic reputation. In 1954 he was called up for two years’ National Service in the Army. Each week, whether it be track, road or cross-country races, Army duties allowing, Stan would travel considerable distances to represent the club. It is worth remembering that in those days, athletes were completely amateur and paid their own expenses! With increasing fame, Stan was pursued by several leading athletic clubs, but he always refused the offer, and remained completely loyal to his small town club (happily no longer small, and now one of the major clubs in the country). After leaving the Army in 1956, he joined the police force, which because of the long working hours, made training difficult, but somehow Stan coped and continued to run his way to the top.
It is impossible for me to list all his many achievements, so I will restrict myself to picking out one special success which was winning the Southern Counties Three Mile Championship, which was held at the Hurlingham track in London, in June 1957. Unable to obtain the necessary time off, he was on traffic duty at the Royal Ascot races on an extremely hot day. As a concession he was allowed to leave an hour early at 1 p.m., after which he had to rush back home to wash, have a meal, and then get to Hurlingham track ready for a 4.30 p.m. start. I was waiting for him by the entrance, and getting more and more anxious as the minutes ticked away. Suddenly, at 4.10 p.m., he came rushing up asking «Am I too late?» He barely had time to do no more than just jog up the track, plus a few bursts of speed before being called to the start. Taking the lead immediately, he raced away to easily win the title, well ahead of the second runner, and breaking the six mile championship record by over a minute!
The year 1958 was special for Stan, for after brilliantly winning the International Cross-Country Championship, at the age of twenty-one years, he had a series of major wins on the track, including the AAA three mile and six mile titles. However 1959 was his special season (if only the Olympic Games had been held in that year, for in 1960 he was plagued by illness). After winning many of the major distance races in Europe, he was later honoured by being selected as the World Athlete of the Year by the prestigious Society of USA Athletic Statisticians. Only three other British athletes have been so chosen; Roger Bannister, Seb Coe and Jonathan Edwards.
The rest of his athletic career is now part of athletic history. Stan, indeed, has devoted his life to the furtherance of athletics and he is still actively coaching and advising today; he was (and still is) the Best in British athletics!
Chapter One: The Early Years
I was born on 1st May 1936 in Windsor. My father was a retired soldier and had been stationed in Combermere Barracks, Windsor, the home of the Household Cavalry, and that is how I ended up being born in the Royal Borough. My mother, Flora Ivy Tremaine Marshall, had left her home in Tisbury, Wiltshire, where she was one of fifteen children and went to Windsor as parlour maid to the then Dean of Windsor in Windsor Castle at the age of fourteen years. My parents were married in Tisbury on 25th August 1934, when she was twenty-eight, and described on the marriage certificate as a cook; and he was forty-seven years old and listed as a salesman. Their respective fathers, Uriah Marshall, retired insurance agent, and Francis Howard Eldon, retired drayman.
My father, William Frank Eldon, was born at Eton on 18th October 1886 and had enlisted in the Army at the age of fourteen years (he should have been fifteen) in 1900 during the Boer War in South Africa. His father was wounded serving there and his wife took advantage of the free passages for the wives of wounded soldiers, and Dad signed up as a bugle boy so that he could go out as well. As he falsified his birth date, he had two birthdays for the rest of his life. His family also had various spellings of the surname, and when he was born, his birth certificate had his name as ALDEN, but the family had generally accepted ELDON or ELDEN, and when he joined up, he had to select one permanent name, so he settled on ELDON, although his brother and sister kept with ELDEN. Uncertain spellings of surnames were apparently quite common at this time. After he returned from that war, he signed up for the ‘real’ Army in 1903. He joined the Royal Field Artillery, probably because he had grown up with horses working with his father on the brewers’ drays, and horses were still very much in use to pull the guns by the artillery in the early part of the Great War. He went to India and was a sergeant car driver for King George V and Queen Mary on their Coronation Tour of the country in 1911, for which he was awarded a specially engraved Coronation Medal. While in India, he was a British Army Boxing Champion. He then went off to fight in the First World War and was wounded in 1915 and returned to Windsor, where he helped to train the Household Cavalry in horsemanship.
According to his Army discharge papers, he was a 3rd Class Gymnast; obviously not very good, and something that I must have inherited, as gymnastics was never one of my strong activities, but he was a 1st Class Equestrian. He left the Army in 1918 when he had completed fifteen years’ service; twelve years with the Colours and three years in the Army Reserve, and settled in Windsor. He kept up his interest in boxing and often went to the Star and Garter Gym in Peascod Street, Windsor, where all the great champions trained right up to Sugar Ray Robinson in 1952. My father was a strange mixture; brought up as a Wesleyan or Methodist, he never touched alcohol and in spite of his years in the Army as a sergeant, I never heard him swear; and I mean never. On the other hand, he had been a smoker from the age of about ten, starting off on Woodbines and progressing to Players, and about twenty a day. He
smoked all his life until his death age eighty-eight years in 1974. Because he smoked, none of his children have ever smoked and I have never even tried a drag behind the bike sheds.
I was the first of my father’s second family. By his first marriage he had a daughter and two sons, and his wife died when the youngest one, my half-brother Bernard, was seven years old, in 1933. He remarried in 1934 to my mother Ivy, and I came first in 1936, followed by two sisters; one in the year before the war, 1938, and one as peace came in Europe in 1945. I was born in the end terrace house at 25 Elm Road, Windsor, which backed on to Combermere Barracks, which was literally just a few feet away; so I grew up to the sound of bugles playing ‘reveille’ and ‘lights out’. There was no electricity and only gaslights in three rooms; two downstairs, and one upstairs in my parents’ bedroom. In the bedrooms of us children, there was a single torch light bulb attached to a picture frame above the bed, that worked from a small battery, or there was a small night-light candle. There was no bathroom and the toilet was outside, although it was within the main structure of the house and not in an outbuilding as many were in those days. I remember the squares of newspaper torn up and tied with string - the substitute for toilet paper. Bath night was a tin bath with hot water heated up by the ‘copper’ in the kitchen (or was it the scullery?). I seem to remember it was youngest first and oldest last, so the younger you were, the cleaner the water.
I have always liked fresh-baked bread, and the smell of the bakery on the corner of Elm Road, can still be remembered. The little bakehouse at the back of the corner shop, run by the North family, was opposite our local, but as my parents did not drink, my only visit there was at Christmas time to buy a bottle of stout for the Christmas puddings. I did make frequent visits to the bakery, where I would watch the rolls come out of the giant oven and then run the few yards home with them before covering them with butter and eating them while they were still very warm. They cost a halfpenny each and I have never tasted better bread in my life. I cannot remember very much from before the war; I was only three when war broke out, but I do remember my sister Janet Athol being born on 18th December 1938. I remember because there was a lot of snow on the ground and my mother was in the front bedroom overlooking our little road with my new sister. Dad built a huge Queen Mary out of snow, and we spent Christmas that year in the small bedroom at the front of the house.
The Sunday that war was declared, I was apparently in All Saints’ Church, Windsor with my parents, although strangely enough I do not remember the details. I do however have memories of the war years. My father was in Dad’s Army; he had previously served in the Boer War and the Great War, and he used to leave home at night with his rifle and go off to the ack-ack guns in Windsor Great Park, which were presumably there to protect Windsor Castle. My mother and elder brother went off, on the nights my father was not on duty, to man the stirrup pumps at our church and the laundry where Dad worked. I often wondered what the little flow of water that came from the pump, would do in the face of a real fire. At home when the siren went, it was under the stairs where we had a supply of food and other essentials. If there were too many in the house at the time, then the dining-room table was the protection for some.
My early school days were at Spital Infants’ School in Windsor, where I started in 1940. My memories there are of Miss Meanwell the headmistress; the introduction of school dinners at five pence a day (2p); and the smell of cabbage. Towards the end of my time there, I remember how we used to be kept informed by the headmistress on the progress of the war. I only remember one occasion when the school was informed about the death of a father of one of the pupils. This was strange really, as Windsor was a garrison town and the barracks were opposite the school. I remember well my last year at Spital School, where we were graded by our arithmetic achievements. I could recite up to about my fourteen times tables.
At the start of the war, we were all supplied with gas masks. I had a Micky Mouse one with a large tongue, but my sister, who was two years younger, had a large one that she could fit inside for the first part of the war, before switching to the Micky Mouse model. These of course had to be carried to school each day in case of the expected gas attack.
Each day when the siren went, we all trooped down to the underground shelter, which was damp and open to the sky at the far end; I presume to let in fresh air.
Windsor was reasonably spared in the war as far as bombs were concerned, except for a few accidental bombs. One major incident was when the railway was bombed and some cottages near the Great Western Station were wiped out.
The biggest disaster was one Saturday afternoon towards the end of the war. I was at home with my father listening to a football match on the radio and my mother had gone shopping in the town. There was a huge explosion that shook the house and we later found out that a V-2 had hit the destructor chimney about a mile from home and destroyed a number of homes in the Dedworth area of Windsor. Not knowing what had happened, I remember waiting for my mother to arrive home. She did come home safely and knew much more than we did about the bomb. News travelled fast by word of mouth in the town.
My brother Bernard, attended the Windsor County Boys’ School, first of all at its old premises in Trinity Place, Windsor, and later at the new school which opened in 1938. He looked after the nature hut at the school, where fish, mice and other creatures were kept. He came home one day after a bombing raid very upset, as all the glass containers had been shattered by the blast and all the pets were dead.
Other memories of the war concerned the wounded soldiers from the military hospital who were allowed into town when they were recovering and they were all dressed in bright blue suits. Then there was the death of a friend’s father who was a policeman. He was stabbed by drunken Canadian soldiers in a fight in the town.
In 1943, I had joined the choir of All Saints’ Church in Windsor, where my brother had preceded me. He had a wonderful voice and had been compared to Ernest Lush of “Oh for the Wings of a Dove” fame. It is always a problem when one member of a family has to follow someone with a great talent, and I suppose that was a problem that my own children eventually had, keeping up with my athletic talent.
I was actually introduced to the choirmaster on St John’s Day at the Parish Church in Windsor, St John the Baptist. I went along to the next choir practise and duly got taken into the choir and started to earn my shilling (5p) a month by attending three practise sessions a week and two services on a Sunday.
To start with I spent time in the organ loft watching the service and learning about the procedures. I always enjoyed this and was fascinated by the organ, its four keyboards and all the stops; sometimes I was allowed to pull out a stop to assist the organist.
There were some strange initiations for choirboys in those days. The process at All Saints’ where I had joined, was supposed to involve a dead cat being hung around the neck of the ‘victim’ but it never happened in my time.
I did not have the voice of an angel or the voice of my brother, but I did progress and eventually became senior chorister with the improved pay of five shillings (25p ) a month. Funerals and weddings could boost this as we received two shillings and sixpence for each of these extra duties.
One of the most enjoyable events of the year, was singing carols at the King Edward VII Hospital in Windsor at Christmas time. We would visit all the wards, including maternity, and I would often have to sing solo on these visits. I wonder how many premature births resulted. Other highlights of my years in the choir were the trips to London. At least once every year, the priest in charge at my church, the Reverend Sidney Smith, would take a group from the choir to London for sightseeing, which was always enjoyable, especially when it came to eating, as we always ate both lunch and tea in one of the Lyons Corner Houses. The knickerbocker glories were fantastic and I developed a liking for ice cream, which has never gone away.
It was on some of these outings t
hat I experienced London theatre for the first time. The first show I ever saw was ‘Oklahoma’, but ‘Carousel’ and many others followed, either on these choir outings or later with the Church Youth Club.
In the early 1940s while at the infant and junior school, I always had a party on my birthday, which was the 1st May. The weather must have been a lot warmer than now, as every year the party would be in our small back yard and I would have school friends of both sexes attending. We always had a large bath of water to play in and we did not bother with costumes. In fact it was frequently so hot, that Dad used to tie a sheet or blanket over the garden to keep us from the hot sun. I do not remember a bad 1st May from those early days. I no longer strip off in the garden on my birthday; fortunately for the neighbours.
I moved on in 1944 and went to the Royal Free School in the centre of Windsor for the next three years. The headmaster here was a Colonel Frome who ruled the school with his swagger stick and did not mind using it on girls as well as boys.
My memories from this stage of my life were of the large number of Dr Barnardo boys in their uniform; black boots and navy-blue clothes.
By the time I reached the middle of the school, which would have been the last year of the war, there must have been a terrible shortage of teachers; the classes were large and I remember that for days on end there was not a teacher in our class and the head would sit me at the front of the class on a high stool at the teacher’s desk and tell me to keep an eye on the class of around forty. I think it was because I was one of the tallest in the class and was less likely to be bullied, even though I was only nine or at the most ten years old.
Even during the war, we made the journey to my mother’s old home in Wiltshire, and on one trip down there, my Aunt Mary who was a sergeant in the ATS, was on leave and took me by train to Salisbury just fourteen miles away. It was a very eventful day as bombs were dropping on the old city that day, and while I was outside Woolworth, a stray German plane machine-gunned the street. We made our way back to the station, only to find a number of bombs had fallen on or near the railway track. After a long delay, we caught a train, and as we pulled out of the station, I remember seeing a large crater in a back garden only a few yards from the line. We eventually arrived back in Tisbury very late, and to the great relief of my parents, complete with a box of day-old bantam chicks I had bought in Salisbury Market.