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   CCF in Quad - Empire Day 1937

  
Photogallery
CCF in Quad - Empire Day 1937

CCF in Quad Empire Day 1937

Photo + text supplied by Oliver Keeble

Photograph from my late father O J (John) Keeble’s (Hawke 1934-1939) period photo album, showing OJK as Senior cadet leading the Empire Day Parade of 1937 with Major O’Morchoe taking the salute.

OJK was a Uganda pupil living near Masaka and was Head of School in 1939. He joined up at the outset of hostilities and served with the 4th (Uganda) KAR, for the duration of the War, attaining the rank of Major.

Apparently his A Level results were "the best in Africa" that year, but he was unable to go up to Trinity on the strength of a Rhodes scholarship, until after the War. Called to the Bar in 1949, he joined the premier law firm of Hunter & Greig in Kampala - the practice exists to this day - becoming the senior partner in the mid 1960’s.

Following expulsion from Uganda at the time of the infamous Asian Exodus orchestrated by Idi Amin, he was awarded the OBE in 1973 for ‘services to the British Community in Uganda’, services which included high profile actions in the case of Dora Bloch, murdered during the ‘Raid on Entebbe’ and, in defence of an American, personally serving Idi Amin, sometime RSM in the 4th Battalion, with a Habeus Corpus notice to effect the release of an American, Strudel(?) or Strugel, perhaps - the only time OJK was known to have ‘pulled rank’. The Yank was freed, OJK fled to the UK, not so lucky the Chief Justice Ben Kiwanuka, who issued the writ, meeting a grissly end the following day, in an unlikely, single vehicle, road accident. The coroner never could satisfactorily explain the multitude of bullet wounds to his body.

OJK died in 2000 at the age of 78, at ‘home’ - hardly - in Brighton, having become a commuting Civil Servant in the Dept of Industry for the remainder of his working life.

  • Ron Bullock (Scott 1948-1953) writes:
    Keeble's CCF picture - that must be Capt. Nicholson's back? I don't think I ever saw a picture of him. I see he is wearing his naval uniform. I wonder if he did this on a daily basis. Don't suppose so, but wouldn't that have been splendid!