Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge

laboratories or out in the fields. In spite of his parents’ disapproval, at the end
of his first year John took the opportunity to sign up to the Armoured Wing
of the Officer Training Corps. He wanted to be in tanks, but before moving
into a specialised regiment John had to undertake preliminary training. This
meant sharing a barrack room with another 30-odd recruits at Fulford, near
York, amongst whom he met two men from King’s, Barry Gibson and Ian
Wylie – the latter a fellow Agriculture student and John’s close friend. All of
them elected to join the Royal Armoured Corps and were a crack platoon of
keen and quick learners.
John was posted to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Within two
months of graduating he was with the First Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment.
He became Officer in Command of No 5 troop and was involved in the battles
at Arnhem and in the Ardennes, as part of the Allied push. One dawn in 1945,
two weeks before the German surrender, Lieutenant Noble was shot in the
head by a sniper, eight miles from the objective of Hamburg. Standing in the
turret of his tank answering a radio signal call, the bullet passed through his
cheek and neck.
John returned to Cambridge after two further years in the Army. He
remained the committed student he had been, but cut the distraction of
college rugby from his life in order to complete his two remaining years of
Agricultural Science in a single year. Leaving Cambridge, John moved back
to Australia to try to make a life for himself there. It was there he met Gwen,
who became his wife. In 1954, John made enquiries about the new field of
farm broadcasting for the Australia Broadcasting Company, and soon
enough, after work in radio, he was one of the very early weathermen
on ABC TV.
During his years at the ABC, John visited Africa and Asia to impart his
knowledge of broadcasting as part of some courses sponsored by the United
Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation. This fuelled John’s interest in
travel, that he was able to engage in much more fully after transferring to the
newly created position of Director of Publicity Services on the Australian Meat
Board. The 12 years John spent travelling around the world educating
173
OBITUARIES