It was a tactical error. Sammy Stockton, who was stroking the boat, took us up the next half of the course as though pursued by all the fiends in hell and we won the race by two-fifths of a second. General Goering had to surrender his cup and we took it back with us to England. It was a gold shell-case mounted with the German eagle and disgraced our rooms in Oxford for nearly a year until we could stand it no longer and sent it back through the German Embassy. I always regret that we didn’t put it to the use which its shape suggested. It was certainly an unpopular win. Had we shown any sort of enthusiasm or given any impression that we had trained they would have tolerated it, but as it was they showed merely a sullen resentment.

Two days later we went on to Budapest. Popeye, faithful to the end, collected a dog-cart and took all our luggage to the station. We shook the old man’s hand and thanked him for all he had done.


‘Promise me one thing, Popeye,’ said Frank, ‘when the war comes you won’t shoot any of us.’

‘Ah, Mr. Waldron,’ he replied, ‘you must not joke of these things. I never shoot you, we are brothers. It is those Frenchies we must shoot. The Tommies, they are good fellows, I remember. We must never fight again.’

As the train drew out of the station he stood, a tiny stocky figure, waving his cap until we finally steamed round the bend. We wrote to him later, but he never replied.

We were greeted at Budapest by a delegation. As I stepped on to the platform, a grey-haired man came forward and shook my hand.

‘My dear sir,’ he said, ‘we are very happy to welcome you to our country. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye,’ I said, introducing him rapidly to the others, half of whom were already climbing back into the train.

We were put up at the Palatinus Hotel on St. Margaret’s Island where Frank’s antiquated Alvis created a sensation. Members of our party had been dropping off all the way across Europe and it was only by a constant stream of cables and a large measure of luck that we finally mustered eight people in Budapest, where we found to our horror that we had been billed all over town as the Oxford University Crew. Our frame of mind was not improved by the discovery that we had two eights races in the same day, the length of the Henley course, and that we were to be opposed by four Olympic crews. It was so hot it was only possible to row very early in the morning or in the cool of the evening. The Hungarians made sure we had so many official dinners that evening rowing was impossible, and the food was so good and the wines so potent that early-morning exercise was out of the question. Further, the Danube, far from being blue, turned out to be a turbulent brown torrent that made the Tideway seem like a mill-pond in comparison. Out in midstream half-naked giants, leaning over the side of anchored barges, hung on to the rudder to prevent us being carried off downstream before the start. We had to keep our blades above the water until they let go for fear that the stream would tear them out of our hands. Then at the last moment, Sammy Stockton, the one member of our rather temperamental crew who could be relied upon never to show any temperament, turned pale-green. A combination of heat, goulash, and Tokay had proved too much for him and he came up to the start a very sick man. Once again we were pinning all our faith on our Four, as the eight in the bows had an air of uncoordinated individualism. We were three-quarters of the way down the course and still in front, when John Garton, who was steering, ran into the boat on our left. There was an immediate uproar of which we understood not one word, but it was, alas, impossible to misconstrue the meaning of the umpire’s arm pointing firmly back towards the start.