College Record 2019

My final reminiscence comes from a book by Margaret Pawley, In Obedience to Instructions: FANY
with the SOE in the Mediterranean (1999). FANY stands for ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’ and
SOE for ‘Special Operations Executive’. Colin served in the SOE as Air Operations Officer in
support of Italian partisans in 1944–5. While in Italy, he met Peggy, who was his FANY secretary.
They got married immediately after the war. Before joining the SOE, Colin had served in India,
Persia and North Africa, and taken part in the landings at Salerno and Anzio. This anecdote will
be found on page 84 of Pawley’s book: ‘Two officers of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry
were lying side by side in the mud during a lull in one of the Anzio battles. Colin Kraay, who
joined the army as an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford, had a considerable interest
in ancient coinage. As he dug in the undergrowth he uncovered a Roman coin, whose history
he expounded to his companion …’ This is a wonderful picture of enthusiasm for one’s subject
in challenging circumstances. And curators, like many academics, are often those who have not
grown out of their youthful enthusiasms.
The current political situation, without wanting to mention the ‘B’ word, is perhaps not ideal
for an international college such as ours. My own experience, for what it is worth, has been
that scholars are even more ready to collaborate internationally when they can defy political
uncertainty; but if it seems that things are difficult now, it may be worth remembering that Colin
retained his own enthusiasm even while lying in the mud at Anzio.
There is, I think, a moral here for all members of the College, and indeed for the College itself,
which was fifty years young only the other day. And that is, whatever the circumstances, never
lose that youthful enthusiasm.
MEMORIES OF WOLFSON
Coins from Ashmolean Museum’s Heberdeen Coin Room. Leucaspis (left) and Head of
Athena (right). Photo: The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
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