Gerald Hollis World War II as he was colour blind. He joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) in 1940, and was commissioned into the Royal Navy in 1942. He served as a physical training officer at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, Devon. The college was moved to Eaton Hall, Cheshire between 1943 and 1946, because of Nazi bombings. At the end of hostilities, Hollis felt drawn to holy orders: from 1945 to 1947, he trained for ordination at Wells Theological College. He was ordained into the Church of England in 1947 and then served his curacy at St Dunstan's,
Aston Webb with the church probably helped the young architect get the job. In London, Webb's best known works include the Queen Victoria Memorial and The Mall approach to, and the principal facade of, Buckingham Palace, which he re-designed in 1913. Webb also designed the Victoria and Albert Museum's main building (designed 1891, opened 1909), the Royal United Services Institute, Whitehall (1893–95), and – as part of The Mall scheme – Admiralty Arch (1908–09). He also designed the Britannia Royal Naval College, Devon, where Royal Naval officers are still trained. He enlarged and sympathetically restored the perpendicular Church of St John Baptist,