J. H. H. Coombes
Colonel John Harold Henry Coombes CBE (1906–1978) was the first principal of Cadet College Petaro, one of the earliest public schools built in Pakistan in 1957. During his military career, he served in the British Army and fought the Second World War on the Malayan front. Education and early life 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 second lieutenant in 1st Battalion of the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry. There was conscription in Guernsey, and he did