Clements W. - The OldWinburnians

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Walter was the son of Walter & Louisa Clements and their home, at the time of his death was 39B Union Street, Ryde, I.O.W.  Thus, he might have been a boarder at W.G.S.
From School, Walter became a Civil Servant in the Inland Revenue.  At the Reunion in July 1932, he performed in a concert, which followed the Dinner and Annual General Meeting on the Saturday,  when he had been voted on to the O.W. Assoc. Committee. Also that year, he moved from the Poole to the Bournemouth Tax District.
A report of the  A.G.M. in the summer of 1935, contained the following, " The agenda was steadily disposed of, in spite of much interruption by Messrs. Clements and Dunton, who appeared to think that the meeting was staged for their benefit."  Never-the-less, he was elected to the committee and, at that time, he lived in Woodend Road,  Winton. Bournemouth.
He was moved to Harrow  toward the end of 1935, when it was reported that it, "...enabled him to forward a genuine excuse for his absence from the last Committee Meeting".
Walter (or Wobbly as he was known at school) wrote at Christmas 1936 and compared Harrow with  Poole  as, 'quiet, dull and dirty',  adding that, '...skating at Wembley and gym once a week was keeping him A1.' He married  Muriel Phyllis  Clements  of Harrow. Middlesex, in 1939.
After volunteering for service in the Royal Air Force, Walter trained as a Navigator and was commissioned.
It is not known when Walter joined his Squadron, which was re-formed late in 1941 and trained at Waterbeach,Cambridge, with Wellington bombers, specifically for overseas duties.  The unit flew to India in March 1942.   There it was  engaged  in operations  over Burma, dropping supplies and bombing, flying  the Wellington Mk X, latterly from Jessore, Nr. Madras.  
However, it is recorded that from  July 1944,  the Squadron was progressively converting  to the Liberator Mk.viii and crews were retrained at a Heavy Conversion Unit ( No. 1673), situated  at Kolar, some 200 miles to the west of Madras.
It was at Kolar that Walter died. W.G.S.  understood that he had, "died of injuries"  and it was thought that he had been involved in a crash  during re-training.   However, the following entry appears in the Squadron Diary  [Form 540] :-"An unfortunate accident at Kolar, deprived the Squadron of a popular and efficient officer.  Fg.Of. W. Clements died of injuries received from contact with a rotating airscrew."
Fg.Off. Walter Clements is interred in the Madras War Cemetery  [Chennai] India. It was created by the Imperial War Graves Commission to receive 1939-1945 War graves from many  civil and cantonment cemeteries in the south and east of India.

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The School Magazine recorded that, "Many will remember him as a boy of invariable cheerfulness and great charm, endowed with a perspicacity and alertness of mind,  remarkable in one so young, and for his love of impersonation with which he always delighted his contemporaries".