His brother Godfrey was serving as navigating officer on HMS "Cleopatra", the first ship into Singapore, and the two were reunited the same day. Chenevix-Trench was also reunited with his Indian troops, and took the unusual decision that "after all my men have been through and their magnificant behaviour under shootings, beatings, and starving by enemy propagandists, I feel the least I can do to thank them is to see them all happily home to their villages". He therefore returned to England via India, only reaching home on 29 October 1945. Chenevix-Trench returned to Oxford in 1946 to complete his degree. He was elected President of the Christ Church Junior Common Room towards the end of that year, was involved in reviving the college's Boat Club, and was "the life and soul of the gathering" at many social functions. He was taught by R. H. Dundas, Eric Gray, Gilbert Ryle, Jim Urmson and Maurice Foster. He won the prestigious Slade Exhibition in 1947, and then achieved the remarkable feat of gaining an alpha in every single paper in Greats. In his final year, he had done some classics teaching back at Shrewsbury School when several classics teachers fell ill, and his enjoyment of it decided him on teaching as a career, with plans to become a headmaster one day. With offers to teach at Christ Church, Eton and Shrewsbury, he eventually chose Shrewsbury, and began teaching classics there in January 1948. At Shrewsbury Chenevix-Trench's philosophy was that he preferred that "the majority of boys kept the rules most of the time rather than one which stifled individual vitality". His lessons with the younger years also had a system of punishments and bribes: excellent work might receive a shilling or half crown reward at his own expense, while a major mistake in written work would be marked by a picture of a crab – more than three crab images would result in the boy receiving corporal punishment in the privacy of Chenevix-Trench's study. With the older years he introduced textual criticism, philosophy and history to give greater insight into the classical texts than conventional teaching of the time allowed. He would also regularly tutor older boys individually – with alcoholic refreshments on hand – and occasionally permitted his proximity in age to encourage excess humour, as when he let slip to some of the sixth form that a visiting speaker, Reverend Hoskyns-Abrahall, had been known to Chenevix-Trench in his own schooldays as "Foreskin-rubberballs".