In October, 1943, 32-year-old Pilot-Officer Arthur Feeley of Keighley was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross after navigating on “a large number of operational sorties, attacking many of the enemy’s most heavily defended targets in Germany”.
He was an old boy of St Anne’s School, and had been a choirboy and later choirmaster there.
Shortly before Christmas in 1943, having been promoted to Flight-Lieutenant, Arthur visited his old school, where the children presented him with a clock and a wallet.
Thanking them, he modestly and significantly remarked “that the school should share in any honour that he might have gained, for the two strongest influences of his life had been those of his home and his school”.
Some of the boys entertained him with selections from Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, as seen here.
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