Sussex man writes autobiography about tough upbringing in army training boarding school: ‘I was getting something out of my system’

Les Clark Jnr, 83, has published ‘Run Boy, Run! A story of one boy’s survival in a 1950s army training boarding school’, which people can purchase on www.amazon.co.uk.

Les, who lives near Hassocks, said his parents sent him to the school, which he has not named, when he was 13.

He said: “I was supposed to be there for four years but I didn’t like the system. I didn’t like the way I was being treated. I didn’t like the silly things I had to do so I rebelled.”

He added: “I had to leave the school after three-and-a-half years.”

Les said he has changed names of people and places in the book, and said dialogue is ‘typical and not verbatim’. He said he has had bad dreams and sleepness nights throughout his adult life due to his experiences.

But he said: “As I wrote it down I felt better. I was getting something out of my system.”

Les continued: “It’s about the silly things that you were asked to do. Polish this and polish that, clean this and clean that. I fell out with the commandant of the school big time. Basically, you were ‘charged’ by the sergeants and the corporals and all this business. You had to go through a commandant’s case. And it got so bad that no matter what my case was – whether it was good, bad or indifferent – I was put through the commandant, which meant a lot of trouble. I was being charged almost daily. It was silly, ridiculous in the end.”

Les is now retired and lives with his wife Janet but used to be a driver before that and worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland.

He said: “I was 30 years old when I really started to write the book so that was 50 years ago.”

The first version of was called ‘Nothing Left to Lose’, which he wrote by hand and then typed up on a type writer.

But he said: “My car was robbed about eight years later. I was 38 years old and about £3,000 of gold jewellery was stolen from the car, plus about 20 chapters of the book.”

He had no copy of it so he started writing it again, changing the title to ‘Run Boy Run’.

Les said: “After the first eight chapters I sort of froze and I stopped writing.” He said ‘sleepness nights, bad dreams and mood swings were not far behind’ so he knew that he had to finish the book.

He added: “Even now I’m 83 and I still get dreams about what happened in that school and the punishments I got.”

The book has a cover designed by Chris Street and is 43 chapters long.

Les is thanking all of his family and friends who either encouraged him to finish the book, helped him type it up, or put him in touch with people who contributed to the end result. This includes Becci Instrel, who works at Burgess Hill Constitutional Club, who put Les in touch with Simon Bushal who gave him a laptop and taught him how to use it.