Bishop's Bound

Everybody recognized the worn brown face beneath the worn black beret. As usual, there were a few discreet cheers. General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery was paying a filial visit to his father's old college, Cambridge's famed Trinity. His father, Henry Hutchinson Montgomery, had made a great name at Trinity as an athlete; he had been a militant Christian who became an athletic Bishop; at 70, bald, snow-bearded and retired, he still walked his 18 miles a day. Standing before the Tudor Gothic dining hall on one side of Nevile's Court, the General pointed to the flight of seven broad, semicircular steps, said proudly: "My father jumped those at one bound."*

The filial boast went round; it fell as a challenge on one pair of American ears. U.S. Army Sergeant Charles Russel, who claimed to have been quite a jumper at Waukesha (Wis.) High School, made several trial runs, leaped--and landed on the sixth step. Vince Dunne of the Royal Canadian Navy could get no higher than the fifth. One after another the Cambridge varsity jumpers flung themselves at the steps. The Bishop's record stood.

A pink, diffident freshman watched these doings. Eighteen-year-old Malcolm Dickson had no jumping experience. Fired with ambition, he gave a great leap, cleared the seventh step with so much to spare that he fell on his face.

* Roughly equivalent to a broad jump of 22 ft.

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