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TISBURY AT WAR

Tisbury was a much smaller place in the early forties. The population then was about 1,400. It is now 2000.

Due to the upsurge of Nazism and the political crises of 1938 and 39, the Country had become aware of the real possibility of war. For the first time, it was to affect everyone — not just those fighting abroad. Increased Territorial Army recruitment and an air raid precautions programme were early evidence of this but soon all were to be involved in some way or another.

AIR RAID WARDENS

Capt Paulden Walter Scammell
Bill Fowley Victor Spencer
Archie Blake Lottie Spencer and Lottie Spencer
Edith Jukes Frank Harriman [Tisbury Archives]

The Wardens’ post was in the present Library building

MESSENGERS

Margaret Staddon and Ena Blake

AMBULANCE DRIVER

Dorothy Strong

The ambulance was kept at Carter’s Garage (now Tisbury Motor Co.)

AUXILIARY FIRE SERVICE

Hubert Bell Harvey Oliver
Ralph Jackson Harold Macey
Cecil Marshall Cyril Feltham
Fred Rogers Billie Newton
Fred Rixon Toby Baker
Jim Bell Ernie Baker
Alan Bell Reg Maidment (driver)
Eddie Gray John Bull

The Fire Station was on the site of the present Elizabeth Hall.

HOME GUARD

Charlie Rogers and Lewis Burt

The HQ was in the Oddfellows’ Hall (over the cycle shop)

ROYAL OBSERVER CORPS

Eric Marshall Walter Scammell
Fred Green Dinah Moon
John Cox George Bull
Percy Randall Mr Rayner

The observation post was situated to the left of Monmouth Hill

THE POLICE

Vi Capewell was a Woman Auxiliary Police Constable

MEDICAL

Dr Du Pre was the local G.P.

THE SOUTHERN RAILWAY

This was a very important link with increased traffic due to war supplies to RAF Chilmark and elsewhere. Military units were constantly arriving and departing as well as service people going and returning from leave. Those who worked on the railway locally included:

Sid and Margaret Dunn at the Hatch Level Crossing Gates
Frank Read, Ernest Lewis and Charlie Dicker

WOMEN’S LAND ARMY

Margaret Staddon, Viola Wheeler and Mary Symes

RAF CHILMARK

Many civilians worked there including Iris Staddon, Joyce Kay, Dinah Moon and Kathie Mould

WAR WORK

Light assembly work was carried out by women at Parmiter’s and gas mask assembly at Pyt House Club. No doubt many others had jobs at military camps around the area as well as in factories making aircraft parts and, at a later stage, even small landing craft.

Betty Ball (nee Old) worked on the land at Richardson’s Farm and was a batwoman at RAF Old Sarum. She and her sister Dorothy and their mother, knitted RAF pullovers, socks, etc.

THE SHOPS

Olive Butt worked at the Co-op in the High Street and her husband Fred drove the baker’s van. He needed a pass to travel along the road through RAF Chilmark. Ron Kirby ran his chemist shop. Mr and Mrs Harvey Oliver kept the newsagents. Dorothy Strong and a friend shared the baker’s round for Harris the Bakers. Archie Blake kept one of the butcher’s shops.

So you can appreciate, Tisbury was a very busy place particularly as some hundreds of servicemen had arrived in the local camps and at RAF Chilmark. One can imagine the tramp of heavy boots late in the evenings as troops visited the six pubs then in business and the canteens set up on a voluntary basis by the British Legion and the Methodist Church. Dances were held at the camps and in the Victoria Hall which doubled as a cinema.

Pic: 2. TISBURY WORKHOUSE (demolished in the early sixties) which was situated on Monmouth Hill. During the war, many units were quartered there including Number 10 Company, Non-Combatant Corps. The NCC was made up of conscientious objectors and sometimes ‘safe’ aliens such as German Jews who performed war work which did not involve the carrying of arms. It included many men with artistic talents and with the help, in some cases, of local people, they performed plays in the Victoria Hall.

THE FORCES

Many Tisbury men and women joined the armed services. Here are a few of the many:

MARGARET STADDON started the war as an ARP warden. On call-up, she joined the Women’s Land Army. In view of her family’s association with the timber trade, Margaret was placed in the Women’s Timber Corps.

JACK SHALLCROSS, Martin’s father, served as a Lands Officer in the Air Ministry whilst his wife Daisy typed for the Home Guard as a temporary clerk.

ARCHIE ‘BISH’ BISHOP was a regular in the Royal Navy. In 1939 he was serving on HMS Fame, largely on fleet escort duties, and was involved in the Norwegian Campaign in early 1940. In 1941, on HMS Exeter, he took part in the sinking of the German battleship Graf Spee off South America. In the following year his ship was sunk in the Java Sea during one of the blackest episodes of the war. Captured then by the Japanese, he was later one of 1,000 prisoners transferred to Japan where he was imprisoned off Nagasaki to work in a shipyard.
At about 1100 hrs on 9th August 1945, Bish was working in the kitchen when there was a blinding flash and blastwave. It was the second of the atom bombs dropped by the Americans. In the confusion of the next few days, Bish and his fellow prisoners were able to make contact with American planes and minesweepers and a rescue party arrived on the 5th September.

RICHARD STRONG had served with the navy since 1915 rising to the rank of chief stoker. During the war Richard survived the unenviable duties of Atlantic Convoy Escort and survived to take his well-deserved retirement. His daughter, Kathie, when directed into war service, worked at RAF Chilmark whilst her sister, Dorothy, assisted with Harris’s Baker’s round.

HUGH COX joined the Royal Navy in 1943 and later, in HMS Potentilla, escorted ‘build-up’ convoys to Normandy for the Invasion of Europe and assisted with the laying of ‘PLUTO’ from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg. His wife, Carol, was in the WRNS serving at Fort Southwick, Portsmouth as a teleprinter operator on the staff of C-in- C Portsmouth.

GEOFF MULLINS volunteered for the Royal Marines in 1943 and trained as a marine commando. In July 1945, on the battleship HMS King George V, he was taking part in operations off the Japanese coast when the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

John, 16th Lord Arundell of Wardour was serving as an officer in the Wiltshire Regiment. He embarked for France with the battalion in April 1940 to join the British Expeditionary Force but was wounded near Douai and taken prison. Eventually he was moved to Colditz Castle where he contracted tuberculosis. He was repatriated to Chester in September 1944 where, sadly, he died on 25h September 1944.

JOHN BICKERSTETH (later Bishop of Bath and Wells) was commissioned in the Royal East Kent Regiment in 1941. His battalion was converted to anti-aircraft and, as a troop commander, he landed in Normandy on D+5. The troop with its 40mm Bofors guns was attached to 185 Field Regiment RA in an anti-aircraft protection role. The Division later swept through Belgium and Holland and on VE Day was to the west of Arnhem where John accepted the surrender of the 44 SS Division.

Pictures:

3. ST PATRICK’S DAY 1942. INSPECTION OF THE IRISH GUARDS BY GENERAL GODLEY AT FONTHILL PARK.
On the right is John Haselwood, Troop Commander, No 2 Squadron who finished the war commanding the 3rd Battalion, Irish Guards.
[Fonthill Estate]

4. Among the assembled troops on that occasion was Arthur Capewell, a Nottinghamshire lad who joined the Irish Guards in April 1939. Serving with the British Expeditionary Forces in France in 1940, he was evacuated from Dunkirk and re-mustered at Fonthill Park. There the battalion was converted into an armoured division in preparation for the Invasion in 1943. Arthur married Vi Maidment and returned subsequently to make Tisbury his home.
[Violet Capewell]

DOUGLAS FIELD was one of the second Militia called to the army in 1939 and served until July 1946. Towards the end of 1942 he embarked for North Africa where, as part of the 1st Army, he slowly moved from Algiers to Tunis. As an Ordnance Warrant Officer, he later joined the staff of HQ 57 Area as it mobilised for the invasion of Italy. Embarking at Oran, he took part in the Salerno Landings. It was then that the ship in which he was travelling was torpedoed just off the beaches. He was picked up by a destroyer and ‘dumped’ on the beach clad only in his underpants and covered in oil. He rallied the survivors and managed to scrounge sufficient clothing for them to go in search of their units. His conduct on the beach earned him a mention in despatches. He later entered Naples with the Advanced American Troops and assisted in setting up the HQ on the heights of Capri.

CHRISTOPHER HUGHES volunteered in 1939 and joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was commissioned in the Indian Infantry and served in Malaya. Captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore in February 1942, he was moved to Siam (now Thailand) where he worked on the infamous Burma Railway. Many of his fellow prisoners did not survive.

PEGGY LEWIN joined M15 in May 1940 straight from secretarial college working as a civilian at Wormwood Scrubs Prison and then Blenheim Palace. In 1944 she transferred to the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) and sailed to the Far East where she served with the Inter-Services Liaison Department in Colombo and Calcutta.

RUTH TIMBRELL enlisted in the ATS as a volunteer in May 1939. At the outbreak of war, she was posted to HQ Command, Royal Engineers, London District and then to the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (Army Education Corps) in July 1942.

RUTH SULLIVAN’S family were known as ‘The Fighting Sullivans’! She was the youngest of a family of nine — all of whom served in the army, surely a record for any family! Ruth was in the ATS at the REME Workshops at Crawley and trained as an instrument mechanic.

DAVID SWIFT was commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1935. He went to France with the 2nd Field Regiment, in September 1939 as part of the British Expeditionary Force and later returned to the UK via Dunkirk in June 1940. After further service in England, he took part in the Italian Campaign. Gwen, his wife, became a member of the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve in 1941 and served at several British Military Hospitals. They were married in February 1942.

Picture: 5. THE HEBBLETHWAITE MEMORIAL GATE. Set in the wall of Gaston Manor, their home in the High Street, the gate was designed by Bernard Hebblethwaite in memory of his son Flight Officer Edwin ‘Peter’ Hebblethwaite RAFVR, following his death whilst serving with Bomber Command on the 3rd May 1942. Whilst on an operation to bomb Hamburg, his aircraft was believed to have been shot down over the North Sea. There were no survivors.

The American Invasion 1942!

Many of Tisbury’s older villagers have fond memories of the arrival of the Americans in August 1942. Fifteen divisions were stationed in towns and villages across Wiltshire from that time until January 1945. They underwent training on Salisbury Plain before leaving for the continent to take part in D-Day and the epic Battle of the Bulge.

One section was the 11th Armoured Division of General Patton’s Third US Army - Patton’s Thurnderbolts - which arrived in Wiltshire from California in October 1944. Its 16 units spent the next two months in barracks and Nissen huts, some at Fonthill Park. Patrick Kearney, a combat infantryman of the 55th Armoured Infantry Battalion now living in New York, was one of them. He still retains fond memories of his time in Tisbury: ‘I remember walking the two miles from our camp to Tisbury to visit the pubs and attend church services, renting a bicycle to visit Old Wardour Castle, giving candy and gum to the children, throwing oranges to the children who lived in the Fonthill gatehouse as we marched past on manoeuvres, and dances with the girls of the village’.

Pictures:

6. Patrick J Kearney of the 11th US Armored Division

7. US soldiers Wallace, MacGowan, Paul, Crooks, Bowman and Gnagy, shown sawing wood at their campsite at Fonthill Gifford in October 1944
[photo courtesy of the late Keith Boyington]

8. Soldiers of the Third Platoon of ‘A’ Company, outside their Nissen hut in Fonthill Park in October 1944.
Front row: Nugent, Fee, Black, Hanley, Valdez, Crouch & Sellers.
Back row: Nix, Rienstra, Wrobleski & Jackson

One Tisburian who has a special reason for remembering those days is Derek Tucker. His father was landlord of the Crown Inn.

On 10th September 2004, Patrick Kearney returned to Tisbury as a representative of the 55th Amored Infantry Battalion Veterans Association to present a plaque in memory of the men who were stationed here. At a ceremony, well supported by villagers old and new, Patrick was given a very warm welcome. Because of inclement weather, the service was held in the Roman Catholic Church led by parish priest Canon Thomas Atthill, the rector of Tisbury Reverend Humphrey Southern, and chairman of Tisbury British Legion David Childs. Major General Jeremy Phipps, the British Legion President, said this was an opportunity to remember the autumn of 1944 ‘when we looked after some rather special Americans’.

After the service, wreaths were laid, the plaque affixed to the war memorial was dedicated and its citation read by Mr Kearney. Referring to December 14th, 1944 - when the battalion left Tisbury - he said, ‘the people of Tisbury awoke that morning to find us gone and without a proper goodbye. But throughout the years, the men of the 55th AIB remembered Tisbury and the kindness and hospitality of its inhabitants towards them’. Afterwards, Patrick, accompanied by his son, were guests of honour at a lunch in Hinton Hall where they were able to meet informally with many old friends from the village and listen to the British Legion Band.

[With appreciation to Katharine Lawley of the Salisbury Journal and Derek Tucker for their assistance with this section]

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