Education and Early Life
John Coombes was born on 28 December 1906. His father was a fisherman in Guernsey, the second largest of the Channel Islands. His mother died in 1918 when he was 12 years old. As a teenager, he secured a scholarship to Elizabeth College, Guernsey as a day scholar. At college, he was captain of athletics and gained colours for football and hockey. He also played cricket and took part in shooting, besides being a school Prefect and Sergeant in the Officers Training Corps from 1918 to 1924.
Coombes then won a scholarship to Pembroke College, Oxford University in Mathematics (1924–28). Excelling in sports once again, he gained College colours for hockey, football, and cricket, and was the Oxfordshire hockey captain from 1926 to 1928. At the same time, he was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant in 1st Battalion of the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry. There was conscription in Guernsey and he did his 2 month annual training during his vacations. He was a member of the British Army of the Rhine when Britain occupied Germany after World War I until 1931.
In 1928, he contracted double pneumonia and was unable to sit for the Degree Examination. Instead of returning for a 5th year at Oxford, he took a job as an inspector of cotton plantations in the Sudan, where he stayed from 1928 to 1932. There he learnt to read and write Arabic and decided to join the Sudan Civil Service. He also became a Volunteer Officer in the Sudan Defence Force.
In 1935, while teaching part-time, he obtained his BA degree from Oxford, and became married to Alice. He gained his MA in 1939 while working as Senior Geography Master, with French as his second subject, at a public school.
Read more about this topic: J. H. H. Coombes
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