The Foxbury War Memorial Roll of Honour
The fifteen acres that forms Foxbury was once part of Tiark’s family estate. Virtually everything that can be seen from the stadium belonged to the family of merchant bankers whose residence was Foxbury Manor. In the 1930s the family began to sell off some of their land. The adjacent grounds now used by Queen Mary’s University were purchased by Middlesex Hospital and Bart’s Hospital as their sports grounds. Then the Second World War intervened and future sell off were put on hold.
When the war concluded the Old Elthamians were looking for their own sports ground as part of a way to commemorate the former pupils who died between 1939 and 1945. They visited and assessed a piece of undulating farmland and saw its potential, but the price was far too high. Over time, the Elthamians and the Tiarks came to an agreement and in May 1951 the grounds were opened as the ‘Old Elthamians Memorial Sports Ground’. The Old Elthamians remained until 2015 and when it became available again. Never one to miss a great opportunity, Rocky McMillian took out a twenty-five lease on the land and his vision has developed it into what you see today, the home of Glebe Football Club.
The grounds have changed and facilities improved but Glebe cannot forget that this sports ground is here to remember seventy-eight men who lost their life during a war. This is our way of bringing those men to your attention.
LEST WE FORGET
Click on the names below to move directly to that person.
Douglas Mackenzie Bell, James Dallas Black, Andrew Conor Boyd, John Cecil Brenwald, John Bonser Browne, Anthony Frederick Bulgin, Roy Edward Chater, Noel Jeffreys Vernede Church, John Peter Dixon Clarke, Leon Eustace Arthur Clive-Harris, Douglas Charles Couchman, Andrew Crawford, Morris Robert James Crutcher, Errington George McEvoy Davis, Michael Tom Dickinson, Stanley Wallace Elford, James Harold Evans , Malcolm James Ferguson, Peter Douglas Fisher, Alan Thomas Bartlett Ford, William Venn Frame, Philip Brian Frost, Charles Maurice Garton, Kenneth Costall Graves, John Langston Haggerty, Joseph Thomas Harler, Albert Willam Hawkes, Leonard Charles Hitches, Stanley James Hodgman, Stanley Ronald Holland, Donald Arthur Howard, Peter John Hunter, William Edward Fields John, Arthur Ruskin Jones, Leonard Thomas Kiff, Gerald Charles Sommerville Leach, John Slade Leather, John Martin Lefeaux, George Sutton Lefeaux, Paul Leonard Lennard, Eric Henry Liddell, Thomas Peter Lund, Nelson William Lyons, Ian Walter Matthews, Robert McCrae, Frank Alan Mitchell, Walter Harold Mitchell, Alan George Holroyd Nichols, Arnold Greenleaves Onley, Edward John Ormsby , Leslie George Peacock, Thomas Ernest Pearce, Wilfred Harvey Pembroke, George Henry Pentreath, Raymond John Pettit, Anthony Ransom Pickard, John McDougall Pike, Howard Cyprian Pinkham, Frank Plant, John George Polden, Robert Horace Leopold Posgate, Richard Ewart Cecil John Reeve, Neville George Darrel Sandford, William John Scudamore, Ivor Edward Shears, Arthur Frank Sanders Somers, Derek Street Somers, Philip Geoffrey Stainton, Ralph George Swift, Paul Bernard Tayler, Frank W Taylor, Phillip Jack Thomas, Richard Arthur Thomas, Cecil Echlin Van Essen, Kenneth Allan Wallington, Paul Warry, Norman Seymour Wilding, Peter William Wilks, Thomas Eric Bruce Wilson, Stephen Youngs
View Google Drive Map showing the resting places of the Elthamians
The Home Front
Over sixty thousand civilians died across the United Kingdom during the Second World War either as a result of enemy action or in service. Just under half of these people lived in what we now know as Greater London. Six thousand people died in this local area; the current boroughs of Bromley, Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham.
The first nine months of the conflict were relatively quiet on the Home Front as the ‘Phoney War’ ticked over with little action. The situation took a turn for the worse when the German army swept through the Low Countries and France, and the ill-prepared British Expeditionary Force was forced to make an undignified, hasty and unorthodox exit from the beaches around Dunkirk. It was the effective British propaganda machine that turned humiliation into a kind of victory. Two former Eltham College died before the evacuation took place. John Brenwald and Nelson Lyons both died on the 27th of May.
With the Germans having reached the English Channel and invasion looming, the Battle of Britain commenced. Civilian casualties began to increase under the skies of south-east England especially near airfields such as Biggin Hill. The success of ‘The Few’ RAF fighter pilots who won that battle cannot be overestimated. It did however lead to a change of tactics by the enemy who turned to aerial night-time bombing of British cities. Thirty civilian had died in the local area during the first year of the conflict up to 1st of September, 1940. One week later, a hundred and eighty died on the night of 7th of September! The Blitz continued to a greater or lesser degree until the end of May 1941. The only civilian fatality with a link to the college was 76 year old school governor William Larkin, who along with his wife Mary perished on 19th of April at Ermington Road, New Eltham. Thirty-three year old Clara Midge also died at number 5.
Soldier, Frank Plant (20) died when he was accidentally in operations between near Mildenhall on the 28th March 1941. Just three days later on 1st of April 1941, Private Phillip Frost (20) lost his life in Alton, Hampshire. Douglas Couchman (24) from Bexleyheath rests in Eltham Cemetery having died in June 1942.
By the summer of 1944 the war was running in favour of the Allies. The invasion of France had begun. But a new weapon was about to inflict terror along a corridor surrounding the River Thames. The first noisy V1, Doodlebug flying bomb landed in London seven days after D Day. By September the V2 rocket bombs were silently falling from the sky.
On the 29th of August 1944, forty year old former pupil Leonard Hitches was at work at the family garage situated in Eltham, where Ancaster now have their Nissan showroom. Eye witnesses saw and heard a V1 ‘Doodlebug’ flying above Eltham High Street towards Lewisham. The engine cut out. Another witness saw the weapon dip and it struck the spire of Eltham church – look very closely and it is possible to see a line in the stone work where it was later repaired. The V1 landed on Hitches Garage and Leonard died. Doris Sladden (40) and Edward Marks (35) died at the same time. At least two V1 flying bombs landed close to the school causing some damage. A former pupil reported later in the Elthamian, "Returning to school after one holiday (which one, I remember not) we found the roof over the chemistry lab replaced by tarpaulins; damage inflicted by the Doodlebug that had destroyed houses built alongside Mottingham Lane." This may have been the bomb of 16th June 1944 that fell on West Park Road leading to the deaths of Ernest Ingram (67), Herbert Green (56), Percy Green (58) and Glynn Rowlins (47) who was on firewatching duty.
The period of the blitz accounted for almost 2900 deaths recorded by the Commonwealth War Grave Commission in the boroughs of Bromley, Bexley, Lewisham and Woolwich. The period of the V1 and V2 rockets a further 1756, although these might not all have been a result of enemy action. The last victim of enemy action was Ivy Millichamp (34) who died in Orpington on the 27th March 1945. On the same day the final V2 exploded about 500 metres from Foxbury, near Scadbury Manor.
Not all deaths were the result of enemy action or accidents. Illness accounted for Peter Fisher (23) who died in March 1945 of kidney problems whilst Thomas Wilson (36) succumbed to a brain tumour in July 1945. John Polden does not have a war grave. John was an aircraft engineer who died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 27.
Finally, spare a thought for Peter Wilks. Peter was the youngest of all the Eltham College ‘boys’ to lose his life. He died on the 6th of February, 1945 aged 18. His wish was to join the RAF Volunteers or be a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm. Instead, he was conscripted to become a Bevin Boy and work down the coal mines in Yorkshire. On his first day of work at Yorkshire Main Colliery near Doncaster, he was crushed by a coal truck and lost his life alongside 15 year old Harold Wilson. Peter ‘rests’ in the cemetery at Sidcup.
The Airmen
Prime Minister Winston Churchill was a skilled orator and in one of his most famous speeches he paid credit to those pilots who defended this nation during the Battle of Britain. Michael Ferris is one of those ‘few’ and he rests in St Mary’s churchyard, Chislehurst. Michael was not a former Eltham pupil; he had attended Stonyhurst College. None of the Eltham old boys died in the Battle of Britain.
Eight deaths occurred in training exercises. In May 1942, William Scudamore (19) was the first member of the Glider Regiment to die in training. Alan Nichols was part of a crew on navigational training when their aircraft came down in Somerset at the start of 1943. Morris Crutcher was piloting one of two Whitely aircraft, when according to eye-witnesses, they were taking part in ‘high spirited low level flying’. A third joined the fun and a collision occurred with two of the aircraft coming down east of Brize Norton. Martin Lefeaux had died in similar circumstance in June 1940. Michael Dickinson was killed whilst training in the USA. Stephen Youngs died during training in Nottinghamshire and his grave is less than 500 metres away from the Foxbury grounds in Chislehurst Cemetery. John Haggerty crashed in east Yorkshire.
Frank Mitchell (29), Harold Evans (22), Peter Clarke (220, John Browne (20), Richard Thomas (20), Norman Wilding (26) and Robert McCrae (22) all perished in separate incidents involving Wellington bombing missions to Germany.
Donald Howard had already received the Distinguished Flying Medal when flak brought him down on a mine laying exercise off the Dutch coast. James Black was also brought down by flak when he was on a night time mission hunting V1 flying bombs near Boulogne. Lesley Peacock was only 20 when his Beaufighter was presumed to have come down in the sea off Lizard Point in Cornwall whist William Frame died when his Boston did not return from a mission over Le Havre. Derek Somers was lost along with the crew of a Catalina seaplane flying to Gibraltar and two years later his brother Arthur was killed flying a Spitfire that was supporting Allied troops as they battled to gain a foothold on the Italian mainland at Anzio. Also lost in the Mediterranean theatre of war were Neville Sandford (28), Raymond Petit (22), and Ian Matthews (21). Gerald Leach’s Wellington was lost near Benghazi in Libya. John Pike (21) was flying a Wellington which was lost in Italy.
Albert Hawkes and Douglas Bell were lost serving in the Canadian Air Force. Leonard Kiff and Frank Taylor died within a day of each other; both men were piloting gliders into the area around Arnhem as part of the misjudged Operation Market Garden. Errington Davis piloted a Dakota dropping supplies to troops in the jungle of Burma. His plane did not return to base.
Not all the former students attached to the RAF died in action. Ivor Shears died of fever in Karachi and Cecil Reeve died after the war in Chennai. Stanley Ronald Holland and Roy Chater both died in air accidents after the war. In possibly the most unusual case, Arnold Onley was shot by one of his own men. The information on ‘rafcommands.com’ suggests that Frederick Codling took exception at the way he was being punished by Officer Onley and Codling fired twenty-six rounds into Onley’s tent. Such incidents usually led to servicemen being dismissed from service and being tried in civil courts. In this case, as the incident took place in North Africa it was dealt with by the RAF resulting in Codling being the only RAF serviceman in the Second World War to be court martialed found guilty and executed.
The Sailors
When a ship goes down in the ocean people tend to notice. There will be a place, a time, a reason and a list of casualties. That makes it relatively easy for the enthusiasts who wish to research the event. Seven former Eltham boys died serving in the Royal Navy, the Fleet Air Arm or the Merchant Navy.
The first to lose his life during the Second World War was Philip Stainton. Philip attended the college between 1920 and 1925 and went on to qualify as a doctor in 1933. He worked at Ramsgate General Hospital before entering General Practice in Boston, Lincolnshire. He moved back to London and worked in hospitals, before joining the Royal Navy in January 1936. In March 1940, Philip was ship’s surgeon aboard H.M.S. Shropshire. On the twenty-fourth of that month, the crew was onshore in South Africa. That day, along with George Lawson, another surgeon from the ship, Philip died in a road accident. Both are buried in the Dido Valley Cemetery at Simon’s Town in South Africa. This early period of the war is referred to as the ‘Phoney War’, so it is somewhat fitting that the first Elthamian to lose his life was a member of the Royal Navy who died on terra firma in a road accident.
Three months later in June the war was taking shape. Troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk, the country was preparing for a possible invasion and the Battle of Britain was one month away. However, things had been perilous at sea since the start. The day war was declared, the merchant ship S.S. Athenia was torpedoes by a U-Boat in the North Atlantic. Thankfully most of the crew and passengers were rescued but 115 died. Britain depended on imported food; the merchant navy had the job of bringing that food to Britain’s shores and the Royal Navy were there to protect them from packs of U-Boats whose job was to sink the ships. From the First World War, Britain had deployed Q-Ships which were heavily armoured and disguised vessels that aimed to take U-Boats by surprise. Edward Ormsby was a crew member of H.M.S. Cape Howe which was disguised as a merchant ship and renamed the Prunella. On the longest day of 1940 the ship was spotted by U-28 west of Land’s End and torpedoed twice, the first crippled the ship, and the second finished it off. Twenty-seven crewmembers were rescued but Edward was one of eight officers and forty nine other members of the crew who were ‘lost at sea’. He is remembered on the Portsmouth memorial.
Two days later, Cecil Van Essen, who left Eltham along with Edward Ormsby in 1929, died when the tug boat Coringa went down. According to information now available in the National Archives, the tug was towing a crippled tanker which suddenly turned over taking Coringa with her. At the time the information suggested the Coringa was ‘lost in the Atlantic Ocean’. This may well have been the official message to cover a self-inflicted mistake? Wilfred Pembroke died in 1943 whilst an apprentice in the Merchant Navy; more of him, later.
Chief Petty Officer Stanley Hodgeman (27) was a crewman of H.M.S. Barham when it was sunk by U-331 off the coast of Egypt in November 1941. The warship had previously been torpedoed in December 1939 but had limped back to safety. This time she was hit three times by torpedoes, listed to port before the on-board ammunition exploded. 886 men were lost. Stanley is remembered on the Liverpool memorial.
Hither Green Cemetery is the resting place of Howard Pinkham, the last Elthamian to die whilst serving in the navy. Howard had followed his father, a Devonian, into the merchant navy and in February 1945 he was a third officer on board S.S. Sampa. Sampa was part of a convoy returning from Antwerp when it hit a mine off North Foreland. Of the sixty-two people aboard, twelve were killed instantly. Howard was wounded, transferred to H.M.S. Middleton along with other survivors and taken to Sheerness. Sadly, Howard was one of four men who died of their injuries. He was the only Old Elthamian who served at sea, whose mother had the chance to bury her son.
The Troopers
It can be difficult to accurately account for the death of a soldier. John Cranley was not an Elthamian. On the morning of the 13th July he had his breakfast then went ‘to work’ near Lake Trasimene, in Italy. At this place in 217 BC the army of Hannibal routed the Romans. Twenty-five thousand Roman soldiers were killed or captured, many being butchered, others drowned in a lake that turned red with their blood. On the 13th of July 1944 forty men died. John Cranley was one of them. Nobody knows how he met his death. He had left after breakfast and didn’t return for his ‘tea’. He is buried at Arezzo. In the heat of battle you might die unnoticed. There is no ship’s log or witnesses aboard nearby vessels in a convoy. There is no air base from where a plane took off on a mission only to never return. Thanks to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission we know the day a soldier died and the cemetery in which they are buried. From that we can make an assumption about what might have happened. Here we will look at those who died in Europe and Africa.
The first two Old Elthamian soldiers to die did so on the same day and in the same area. John Cecil Brenwald (23) and nineteen year old Nelson Lyons were members of the British Expeditionary Force in Northern France when the German army swept through Holland and Belgium. Trapped between the sea and the Germans, many of the hopelessly outnumbers and ill-equipped British soldiers were miraculously evacuated from the beaches near Dunkirk. John and Nelson did not make it, dying in the fighting before the great escape began.
It was spring of 1941 before the next soldier died. Frank Plant whose father had been Chairman of the Parents’ Association in 1936-37 was killed when a Bren Gun carrier ran into him during a night-time exercise between Mildenhall and Newmarket. Brian Frost died due to injuries sustained attending to an incendiary bomb. Brian is buried in Chislehurst. Donald Couchman died in Britain in June 1942. On the night of a severe bombing raid on nearby Poole, Donald died in Shaftesbury hospital of kidney disease.
The first soldier to die in Africa was P.T. teacher, Kenneth Graves (29). Ken was a ‘Sherwood Forester’. After Mongomery’s success at El Alamein, the British 8th Army was advancing through North Africa with success. By 1942, the entry of America into the war was tilting the balance against The Axis (Germany and Italy). On the 15th of January, 1943 eighteen Sherwood Foresters lost their lives at the Battle of Wadi Zem Zem. For the ‘Sherwoods’ it was their worst day of the war, casualty wise. A wadi is a deep steep sided valley and the Sherwoods were advancing along it with the Germans occupying the high ground. The British succeeded but the cost was high. It was also a big loss to Eltham College. Kenneth was an inspirational teacher who had represented Britain in the 1936 Olympics in what might now be called Gymnastics. He was the only Eltham teacher to be killed in the war.
By September of that year the Allies had swept through Africa and landed relatively unopposed in Sicily before invading the Italian mainland across the ‘toe’ of Italy into Calabria, or further north on the ‘shin’ of Italy at Salerno. The invasion at Salerno began on the 9th of September and on 22nd of that month, twenty-two year old Oxford graduate, John Leather of the Royal Artillery lost his life. We don’t know how exactly. He is buried at Salerno. His parents lived in Rafford Way, Bromley.
The advance through Italy was slow. On the 17th of October, Royal Engineer Kenneth Wallington lost his life on the approach to Rome. The Allies had been held up at Cassino with terrible losses whilst the Germans withdrew north to their well-prepared defensive Gothic Line which crossed Italy from the west coast near Pisa, to the Adriatic coast near Rimini. The last three Elthamians in the army who perished in this part of Europe were Walter Harold Mitchell who died near Anzio in June 1944, Leon Clive-Harris who died on the 9th of September 1944, and George Lefeux, who’s unit was fighting near Rimini at the time of his death on the 24th of October. Both men are remembered on the Cassino Memorial suggesting their bodies were not identified.
Meanwhile, the invasion of Normandy was underway and the Allies had already liberated Paris. The first old boy to die in Normandy was 34 year old Major Paul Warry of the East Yorks who died in August 1944, in Calvados. Paul had lived in Glenesk Road, Eltham. A month later on the 19th of September, Captain Stanley Elford (28) died near Bayeux. His parents also lived in Eltham. The Royal Army Ordnance Corps had the responsibility for storing and moving munitions. Noel Church (30) was enlisted in the RAOC and was the last Old Elthamian soldier to die in France. He is buried at Calais and his death is recorded as sixteen days after the liberation of the town by Canadian troops. Might his death have been a tragic accident whilst he handled ammunition?
The Allies were also advancing, albeit slowly, through the Netherlands following the troublesome airborne landing near Arnhem when two glider pilots from Eltham died. Anthony Pickard (21) of Hither Green, was a Royal Engineer and part of a team who were specialist bridge builders. This was a much needed skill with the army advancing east towards Germany and needing to cross the Rhine and its tributaries. He died on the 18th of November 1944 and is buried at Eindhoven. The last soldier from Eltham College to die on European soil was Alan Ford (32). Like thirty year old Noel Church, Alan who was in the Royal Army Service Corp, was not a front line soldier who went into the heat of battle. That was usually for the younger men. The Service Corp was responsible for transport and administration. He is buried at Mook near Nijmegan, and it appears he perished as the Allies approached the Rhine on the 20th of February, 1945.
Robert Posgate died in Egypt late in 1944. By then the war had move on with a British presence remaining near the Suez Canal in order to protect their interests. Nobody knows how he died but maybe he was employed at the large base at Ismalia. Robert attended Eltham from 1921 to 1929, the same period as Mervyn Peake. Peake’s posthumously publish play Mr Loftus has amongst its characters, Posgate. Little is known about Roberts life other than his heroic attempts to rescue the crew of a burning Wellington that came down on the 11th of November 1941 in Norfolk for which he was awarded the M.B.E., so it seems appropriate that his name lives on in literature?
The Orient
From its roots in Walthamstow when the college educated the sons of missionaries, there had been a continuous flow of ‘old boys’ who chose to settle in the Orient to follow a ‘calling’, or work in business. There were also those sent to face the Japanese invaders.
The Japanese army arrived at the gates of the British stronghold of Singapore on the 8th of February 1942. Within eight days the city fell resulting in the greatest surrender in the history of the British Army. George Pentreath did not surrender, he died on the first day of the Battle of Singapore and three days later Richard Price who had joined the Federated Malay Volunteer Force, lost his life. George was buried at Kranji, Richard is remembered on the Singapore Memorial. Two months later in ‘Burma’, Thomas Harler died, possibly on the retreat from Rangoon? Were they the lucky ones? Charles Garton did not die fighting at Singapore, he lost his life six months after the surrender of Singapore, probably in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp? Malcolm Ferguson and Ralph Swift died within a month of each other whilst ‘working’ on the infamous Burma Railway?
By 1944 the tide was slowly turning in favour of the Allies in South East Asia. Errington Davies of the RAF died when his Dakota came down, possibly supplying the Allied troops advancing in Burma. Thomas Lund died in April 1945 as the East Yorkshire Regiment advanced towards Rangoon.
Let us take a closer look at William Edward Fields John, a Royal Engineer who took part in commando operations for the Special Boat Services. In January of 1945 the Allies planned to attack the Myebon Peninsular to gain a foothold in central Burma. Before troops landed the Japanese defences needed to be weakened. William’s role was to fix explosives to defensive stakes. He was within 100 metres of enemy lines, working silently amongst the mud flats for about two hours. All the explosives were fitted; all went off allowing the Allied troops an easier passage onto land. For this William was awarded the Military Cross. Sadly, two months later he died. He is buried in the north of Borneo. It is an assumption that William may have been engaging in a similar commando operation?
What of the civilians? The most famous of all is Olympic Gold Medalist and Scotland international rugby player, Eric Liddell. If there was a second feature film made of his later life it would see him working amongst the poorest of the poor in northern China, as his parents had done. British nationals were advised to leave China following the Japanese invasion. Eric’s wife returned to her parents in Canada but Eric chose to stay. He was ‘interned’ in a camp and died of a brain tumor in February, 1945.
At the age of fifty-nine, Thomas Pearce was the oldest ‘old boy’ to lose his life, and the first to die in the Far East after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Tom was a successful business man and administrator in Hong Kong. He attended the school when it was located next to Blackheath railway station. He loved cricket and was school cricket captain 1897, 1898 and 1899. His son played first class cricket for Kent. Tom volunteered to fight the invaders and lost his life when he was shot through the head defending the North Point Power Station. After his death, the news-letter of the Old Boys remembered him as ‘a hefty jolly fellow who played brilliant cricket. The faster the bowling, the better he seemed to like it…’
Another keen sports player and businessman was Andrew Conor Boyd who enlisted in the Malay Volunteer Force. Andrew was Captain of Rugby and Head Boy in 1923. He died of cholera in a prison camp in June 1943, aged 38, having spent time working on the Burma Railway. Arthur Ruskin Jones first went out to South East Asia in 1925, working for P&O as a clerk. He had worked in many businesses, often shipping, before the outbreak of war. Like Andrew Conor Boyd, Arthur volunteered to help defend the region against the Japanese. He was captured on the 15th of February 1942, the day Singapore surrendered. He was one of a thousand troops transported to the Batu Lintang camp in Sarawak in 1943, a former barracks used to hold for POWs and civilian internees: men, women and children. Two months before the camp was liberated by Australian troops, Arthur succumbed to malaria. He is buried at Labuan Cemetery.
The last ‘old boy’ to die in the Far East and also buried at Labuan was Paul Bernard Tayler. Maybe he was interned in the same camp as Arthur? Paul died on 11th of August 1945. The Australians liberated the camp on 15th September.
The last word goes the soldier, Philip Jack Thomas. Philip left Eltham in the summer of 1939. He was an outstanding sportsman, Head Boy, and winner of the Bayard Cup awarded to the most influential student. He was enlisted in the 11th Sikh Regiment made up mainly of young men from the Punjab. Philip died as the Allies advanced in Burma trying to regain ground lost two years earlier. We do not know how he died. But what might this young man have achieved in his life? Would his achievements have matched those of Liddell, Pearce or Tayler? Indeed how many young men not just from Eltham but from all around the world were denied the opportunity to make positive human contributions due to the futility of war caused by the actions of those who craved power under the banner of nationalism?
The Class of Thirty-Nine
Thomas Pearce was a successful business man and administrator in Hong Kong. Eric Liddell, was an Olympic gold medalist, international rugby player and ultimately a martyr to his call to serve the poor of China. Ancaster’s shiny Nissan showroom sits on the site of Hitches’ Garage when Lionel Hitches was killed in August 1944. Each of these men had had the opportunity to make contributions to life before being killed in a war. This section concentrates on the ‘boys’ who left school on the eve of the Second World War in the summer of 1939. What might some of these youngsters have gone on to achieve had they been given the chance to live a full, uninterrupted life?
Nine of the sixteen boys took to the air. Robert McCrae, Richard Thomas and James Evans were all crew members who served on board Wellington bombers that came down on missions over Germany. Robert was a wireless operator and James was a navigator. Richard Arthur Thomas and his crew members came down in the North Sea and are remembered at Runnymede.
As the Allies pushed north through Italy towards the defensive Gothic Line, prepared by the Germans, the RAF had a role of supplying Italian resistance fighters behind the German lines. Operation Endicote took place in November 1944 and John Pike piloted one of eleven Wellingtons that were based in the south of the country on a mission to supply the resistance fighters near Udinese in North Italy. The weather was very poor with the crews flying through total cloud. John Pike piloted one of four that did not make it to the drop point. Three of those made it back to base. John’s Wellington did not. The wreckage of his Wellington was found on a hillside near San Marco. He is buried at Bari.
Anthony Bulgin died when his Hurricane flew into a tent near El Alamein, quite why we may never know. Albert Hawkes flew with the Canadian air force and his training aircraft came down in the sea off the Atlantic coast. Peter Hunter flew with the Fleet Air Arm, part of the Royal Navy. He was ‘based’ on the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious. On the first day of August, 1944 the crew were treated to a show given by Noel Coward whilst they were docked in Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Three days later Peter was missing presumed dead.
William Scudamore and Leonard Kiff were RAF glider pilots. William was the first glider pilot to die in training. Leonard piloted his glider into the Netherlands as part of the ill-fated Operation Market Garden, an attempt to seize bridges across the Rhine. The ‘story’ was made into the film ‘A Bridge Too Far’. It is not known whether Leonard’s glider crashed, or whether he died fighting on the ground after a ‘safe’ landing. Twenty-five year old Frank Taylor also perished in the exercise. Roy Chater died after the war ended alongside pilot, Dan Hallifax. Hallifax had been a POW who had spent time in Colditz Castle. In a retraining exercise, their mosquito came down on Pockley Moor, in Yorkshire. Ice on the wings and controls is the suspected reason.
Three of the class of 39 died in the Far East. It is likely that Malcolm Ferguson was captured when the Japanese took Singapore. He died fifteen months after the surrender as a POW in Thailand, having been enslaved and used to help build the Thailand-Burma railway. Thomas Lund and the 1938 Head Boy and talented sportsman Philip Thomas, both died as the Allies began to win back ground in Burma.
Oxford graduate, John Leather died as the Allied troops landed near Salerno in Italy.
Not every man died due to enemy action. Peter Fisher was based on the Wirral in Cheshire, seemingly well out of harm’s way, when he succumbed by kidney problems in Clatterbridge Hospital in Birkenhead.
Spare a thought for Wilfred Pembroke who left Eltham in 1939 aged sixteen. On paper, Wilfred had a difficult life of nineteen years. Born Wilfred Harvey Freshwater he was adopted by his mother’s younger sister and her husband, Albert Pembroke. At school he won prizes in English and French. Shortly after leaving Eltham In 1939 his real mother married Alfred Perston and Wilfred’s military records are in that name. He was the only 1939 leaver to die at sea serving as an apprentice in the Merchant Navy. SS Lulworth Hill was carrying a cargo of sugar back to Britain and was between Cape Town and home when the vessel was picked off by the Italian submarine Da Vinci. It is to be hoped Wilfred died in the explosion that cut the ship in two. Most men died swimming in the shark infested waters and some died when the submarine rammed through the one lifeboat. Twelve drifted on a raft, one by one dying slowly of any of hunger, lack of water, sickness, gangrene, madness or shark attacks. Two men survived the ordeal and were picked up after fifty days afloat. Ken Cooke’s account that can be found on YouTube is truly harrowing.
Gallery
Cartoon by Walter Harold Mitchell from 'Elthamian' May 1933. Caption reads: 'Forty Years On. By jove old man, you've altered quite a lot. I can hardly recognise you.'
An informal photograph of Walter Harold Mitchell with his mother and sister in Hong Kong. Dated 1922 and maybe just before he joined Eltham College. Copywrite E.G.France 2013.
The last Elthamian to die in November, 1946.
Cartoon by Walter Harold Mitchell from 'Elthamian' May 1933. Caption reads: 'Forty Years On. By jove old man, you've altered quite a lot. I can hardly recognise you.'
The Roll of Honour
Here we find out a little about each Old Elthamian on the 1939-45 Roll of Honour. They are shown in chronological order of when they died. Name in RED have links to sites that may be of interest
1940
24th Match 1940
School Years: 1920-25
Age: 31
Service: Royal Navy
Known cause of Death: Ships surgeon on HMS Shropshire. Died in road accident on-shore in South Africa.
Buried: Dido Cemetery, Simon’s Town.
27th May 1940
John Cecil Brenwald
School Years: 1925-35
Age: 23
Known Family Information: Son of John and Ella Brenwald, of Burnt Ash Hill, Lee.
Achievements: Bayard Prize, 1934
Service: Army
Known cause of Death: Member of the British Expeditionary Force who died prior to the Dunkirk evacuation.
Buried: Dunkirk Town Cemetery.
27th May 1940
Nelson William Lyons
Known Family Information: Son of William John and Grace Evelyn Lyons, of Lovibonds Avenue, Locksbottom, Orpington.
School Years: 1929-37
Age: 19
Service: Army
Member of the British Expeditionary Force who died in fighting prior to Dunkirk evacuation.
Remembered on Dunkirk Memorial
1st June 1940
John Martin Lefeaux
School Years: 1923-27
Age: 26
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Accident while flying
Buried: Cranfield, SS Peter and Paul, Bedfordshire.
21st June 1940
School Years: 1924-29
Age: 28?
Service: Royal Navy
Known cause of Death: Crew member of HMS Cape Howe that was torpedoed off Land’s End
Remembered on Portsmouth Naval Memorial.
23rd June 1940
Cecil Echlin Van Essen
Known Family Information: Son of Everard Cecil Vanessen and of Cornelia Coker Vanessen of Somertrees Avenue, Grove Park, Kent.
School Years: 1922-29
Age: 27
Service: Merchant Navy
Known cause of Death: Crewman of Coringa, a tug boat towing a crippled tanker that turned over in the Bristol Channel taking Coringa with her. Information initially supressed.
Remembered on Liverpool Naval Memorial.
1941
28th March 1941
Frank Plant
Known Family Information: Son of George Frederick Plant, C.B.E., B.A., and Kathleen Plant, of Grove Park Road, Bromley, Kent.
School Years: 1933-38
Age: 20
Service: Army
Known cause of Death: Died in an accident. He was run into by a Bren gun carrier on a night time exercise between Newmarket and Mildenhall.
Buried in Newmarket, Suffolk
His name lives on in the ‘Frank Plant Prize for an English Essay’.
1st April 1941
Philip Brian Frost
Known Family Information: The son of Philip Luscombe and Lilla Frost, the family lived a few minutes from the college gates at 7 Crossway.
School Years: 1929-33
Age: 20
Service: Army
Known cause of Death: Died in hospital, Alton Hampshire, of injuries sustained attending to an incendiary device. His father died in Farnborough Hospital the following day!
Buried in Chislehurst Cemetery.
19th April 1941
William Henry Larkin
School Governor – Not named on the Roll of Honour
Age: 74
Known cause of Death: Died along with Mary his wife at 7, Ermington Road, New Eltham, in air raid.
Buried in Woolwich Cemetery.
31st August 1941
Gerald Charles Sommerville Leach
School Years: 1932-38
Age: 21?
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Crew member of a Wellington lost near Benghazi.
Remembered on the Alamein Memorial.
25th November 1941
Stanley James Hodgman
School Years: 1925-30
Age: 27
Service: Royal Navy
Known cause of Death: One of over 800 men lost when HMS Barham was torpedoed off the coast of Libya.
Remembered on the Chatham Naval Memorial.
27th November 1941
John George Polden
School Years: 1926-32
Age: 26
Cause of death: Died in Oxted and Limpsfield Hospital of a brain haemorrhage. John was an aircraft engineer who lived with his parents near Godstone. He has no ‘War Grave’.
14th December 1941
Anthony Frederick Bulgin
Known Family Information: Son of Frederick and Augusta Bulgin, of Conduit House, Greenwich.
School Years: 1931-39
Age: 19
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Accident in which his Hurricane flew into a tent.
Buried at El Alamain.
19th December 1941
Achievements: He presented the school with the Blackheath Cup for the best all-round sportsman of the year. His son Thomas Alexander Pearce played cricket for Kent.
School Years: 1896-99
Age: 59
Service: Civilian
Known cause of Death: Volunteered to defend Hong Kong against the invading Japanese and died from being shot in the head at the North Point Power Station.
Remembered on the Sai Wan Memorial.
1942
3rd January 1942
Donald Arthur Howard
School Years: 1929-37
Age: 23?
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Piloting a Handley Page Hampden and its crew of four, the aircraft was lost without trace laying mines off the Friesian Islands. Donald had received the Distinguished Flying Medal in 1941.
The London Gazette of 18th of July 1941 announced the Distinguished Flying Medal for Donald and on the 29th of August announced his promotion from Sergeant to Flight Sergeant.
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8th February 1942
George Henry Pentreath
School Years: 1934-36
Age: 22
Service: Army
Known cause of Death: Perished on Day 1 of the Battle of Singapore.
Buried at Kranji War Cemetery.
11th February 1942
Richard Ernest Price
School Years: 1927-36?
Service: Civilian?
Known cause of Death: Perished on Day 4 of the Battle of Singapore fighting with the Federated Malay States Volunteer Force.
Remembered on the Singapore Memorial
23rd March 1942
Stephen Youngs
Known Family Information: Son of Herbert E. Youngs and Gertrude Youngs, of Roselands Bungalow, Mottingham Lane.
School Years: 1932-37
Age: 20
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Stephen joined the Advanced Flying Unit based in Nottinghamshire. He died of injuries sustained following an accident in training for low level flying. He flew into a tree.
Buried in Chislehurst Cemetery.
26th March 1942
William Venn Frame
School Years: 1922-30
Age: 28
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Did not return from a mission to Le Havre.
Remembered on the Runnymede Memorial.
26th March 1942
Paul Leonard Lennard
School Years: 1930-38
Age: 20
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: His plane was on an engine test when it crashed near Telegraph Hill in Hampshire.
Buried in West Norwood Cemetery.
24th April 1942
Joseph Thomas Harler
School Years: 1928-32
Age: 25
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: Possibly died on the retreat from Rangoon.
Buried in Rangoon.
28th April 1942
Frank Alan Mitchell
Known Family Information: Son of Major Frank Mitchell and Kathleen Mitchell, of Sidcup.
Achievements: Senior Athletics Champion, 1931. Holder of school 220 yards record set in the same year.
School Years: 1926-31
Age: 29
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Pilot of Wellington that came down over Germany.
Buried at Rheinberg War Cemetery.
8th May 1942
William John Scudamore
Known Family Information: Son of William John and Dora Millicent Scudamore, of Dallinger Road, Lee.
School Years: 1933-39
Age: 19
Service: Army Glider Pilot
Known cause of Death: Possibly the first glider pilot to die in a training exercise.
Buried at Repton St Wynan Churchyard, Derbyshire.
9th May 1942
John Peter Dixon Clarke
School Years: 1932-38
Age: 22?
Service: RAF
Peter served in 158 Squadron as an 'observer' on a Wellington. They left their base at Driffield at 22.30 with their target as Warnemunde. Known cause of Death: Crashed into the Baltic Sea off Rostock with all crew lost.
Buried in Berlin War Cemetery after his body had been moved from Rostock.
5th June 1942
Douglas Charles Couchman
School Years: 1929-36
Age: 24
Service: Army
Known Cause of Death Died of kidney disease in the military hospital at Shaftesbury, Dorset.
Buried in Eltham Cemetery.
6th June 1942
Robert McCrae
Known Family Information: Son of Robert and Grace Winifred McCrae, of 52 Longlands Park Crescent, Bexley.
School Years: 1931-39
Age: 22
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Wireless operator on a Wellington that came down near Geldern, between the Dutch border and the Ruhr.
Buried in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery.
29th June 1942
John Langston Haggerty
Known Family Information: Son of Albert and May Haggerty, of Cadwallon Road, New Eltham.
School Years: 1929-37
Age: 22
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Died in training accident. Crashed shortly after take-off from Acaster Malbis Aerodrome in Yorkshire..
Buried Leconfield, St Catherine’s Churchyard, north of Kingston-Upon-Hull.
1st August 1942
Charles Maurice Garton
Known Family Information: Son of Charles and Jessie Garton, Dobell Road, Eltham
School Years: 1932-37
Age: 21
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: Died 6 months after the fall of Singapore suggesting he perished as a POW.
Buried Kranji War Cemetery.
21st August 1942
Leslie George Peacock
School Years: 1933-38
Age: 20
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: His Beaufighter X8006 took off on a dusk patrol. The aircraft crashed into the English channel 2 miles North East of Lizard Point. Both crew members were missing presumed drowned.
Remembered at Runnymede.
28th August 1942
Norman Seymour Wilding
Known Family Information: Son of William and Hilda Wilding, of Herbert Road, Shooters Hill, Greenwich. Husband of Pamela Wilding.
School Years: 1927-34
Age: 26
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Wireless operator of Wellington X3331, 57 Squadron. The aircraft failed to return from an operational flight over Kassel, in central Germany.
Buried in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery.
1st September 1942
Ian Walter Matthews
School Years: 1932-38
Age at Death: 21
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: His Hurricane Z5666 was shot down by two Me109s, south of El Imayid, in Egypt.
Buried at El Alamein.
17th September 1942
James Harold Evans
Known Family Information: Son of Frederick and Phillis Evans, of Leysdown Road, New Eltham,
School Years: 1935-39
Age: 22
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Navigator. Took off 20.24 16 Sept 1942 from Chipping Warden on a mission to Essen. Shot down by a night-fighter and crashed into a swimming pool at Veldhoven (Noord Brabant) 6 km SW of Eindhoven.
Buried at Woensel Cemetery, Eindhoven.
30th December 1942
Andrew Crawford
School Years: 1935-40
Cause of death unconfirmed: This may well have been Andrew Hynd Crawford (junior) who went down with HMS Fidelity on 30th December 1942. Engine trouble left Fidelity isolated from its convoy and an easy target for U-Boats. At 16.38 it was torpedoed by U-435. The U-boat reported many men were in lifeboats and others were swimming in the sea. Sadly, the weather worsened and 327 men drowned.
Andrew Hynd Crawford (senior) was a stockbroker living in Finchley.
Remembered on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.
31st December 1942
Michael Tom Dickinson
Known Family Information: Son of Henry Nash and Dorothy Gertrude Dickinson, of Glenlea Road, Eltham.
School Years: 1929-38
Age: 21
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Died in Montgomery, Alabama, piloting of a Valiant training aircraft.
Buried at Oakwood Cemetery, Montgomery.
1943
15th January 1943
Kenneth Costall Graves, P.T. Teacher
Known Family Information: Son of John and Lottie Graves, of Morecambe, Lancashire. Ken lived at the college.
Achievements: Graduate of Manchester University. Represented Great Britain at ‘gymnastics’ in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
School Years: Teacher, 1936-43
Age: 29
Service: Army
Known cause of Death: Died at the Battle of Wadi Zem Zem on the advance on Tripoli.
Buried at Tripoli.
23rd January1943
Alan George Holroyd Nichols
Known Family Information: Son of George Henry Holroyd Nichols and Elizabeth Annie Nichols; husband of Avis May Nichols.
School Years: 1926-32
Age: 28
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Navigation training exercise. Aircraft crashed near Ilchester, Somerset after experiencing engine problems.
Buried at Christ Church Burial Ground, Barnet.
3rd March 1943
Neville George Darrel Sandford
School Years: 1923-24
Age: 28
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Aircraft lost over Mediterranean.
Remembered on the Malta War Memorial.
19th March 1943
Wilfred Harvey Pembroke
Known Family Information: He was born Wilfred Harvey Freshwater in Chertsey, the son of Dorothy Freshwater who was unmarried. Wilfred was adopted by Dorothy’s sister Ruby and her husband, William Pembroke. In 1939, Dorothy married Alfred Perston and Wilfred’s war record is under the surname ‘Perston’.
Age: 19
School Years: 1934-39
Achievements: French Prize 1937, English Prize 1939.
Cause of death unknown: Wilfred left school at the age of sixteen and became an apprentice in the merchant navy. He was a crew member of the SS Lulworth Hill that was torpedoed by the Italian submarine da Vinci. The events following the sinking were harrowing and Kenneth Cooke, the only survivor, penned the account, ‘Who Cares the Sea?’
1st May 1943
John Bonsor Browne
Known Family Information: Son of Henry and Dorothy Browne, of Westmount Road, Eltham.
School Years: 1932-38
Age: 20
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Shot down by a night fighter over Netherlands. Crew were based at RAF Waddington.
Buried at Dalfsen Cemetery in the Netherlands.
16th May 1943
Known Family Information: Son of the Reverend Frederick and Bertha Onley of Muswell Hill. Husband of Barbara Onley, of Elmhurst Avenue, Hampstead, Middlesex.
School Years: 1925-31
Age: 29
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Died in hospital having been shot several times by one of his own men. This resulted in the only case of a serving member of the RAF being court martialled and executed by firing squad, during the Second World War.
Buried at Bone War Cemetery, Algeria.
22nd May 1943
Malcolm James Ferguson
Known Family Information: Son of Frank and Gladys Ferguson, of 1 Lassa Road, Eltham
School Years: 1930-39
Age: 21
Service: Army
Known Cause of Death POW who died working on the building the ‘Burma Railway’.
Buried at Chungkai, Thailand.
5th June 1943
Achievements: Head Boy 1923. Rugby Captain 1922-23.
School Years: 1912-23
Age: 38
Service: Civilian
Known cause of Death: Died of cholera whilst interned in a camp.
Buried Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery, Myanmar.
14th June 1943
Richard Arthur Thomas
Known Family Information: Son of Frederick and Rhoda Thomas, of St Mildred’s Road, Hither Green
School Years: 1930-39
Age: 20
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Wellington bomber lost over the North Sea.
Remembered at Runnymede.
29th June 1943
Ralph George Swift
School Years: 1932-37
Age: 23
Service: Army
Known cause of Death: Died as a POW building the ‘Burma Railway’.
Buried at Chungkai, Thailand.
4th August 1943
Derek Street Somers
School Years: 1932-40
Age: 21
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Catalina Flying Boat lost between Fermanagh and Gibraltar.
Remembered at Runnymede.
15th September 1943
Raymond John Pettit
School Years: 1929-37
Age: 22
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Spitfire pilot. Possibly lost at sea near Sicily.
Remembered on the Alamein Memorial.
22nd September 1943
John Slade Leather
Known Family Information: Son of Mr. and Mrs. Leather, of Rafford way, Bromley.
School Years: 1929-39
Age: 22
Service: Army
Known cause of Death: Died shortly after the Allies landed near Salerno.
Buried at the Salerno War Cemetery.
17th October 1943
Kenneth Allan Wallington
School Years: 1928-31
Age: 28
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: Burial site at Minturno suggests Kenneth perished near Rome three months after the allied invasion of Italy.
Buried at Minturno.
9th November 1943
Maurice Robert James Crutcher
School Years: 1929-38
Age: 21
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Died in a mid-air collision near Brize Norton, whilst training. Eye witness reports suggest ‘high spirited flying’ was involved.
Buried at Herne Bay Cemetery.
24th November 1943
Douglas Mackenzie Bell
School Years: 1922-28
Age: 32
Service: Royal Canadian Air Force
Known cause of Death: Lancaster bomber lost. Currently no know details.
Remembered at Runnymede
26th November 1943
Ivor Edward Shears
School Years: 1931-36
Age: 23
Service: Army
Known cause of Death: Died in hospital of Enteric Fever.
Buried in Karachi.
1944
6th January 1944
Errington George McEvoy Davis
School Years: 1932-37
Age: 23
Service: RAF
Possible cause of Death: Dakota pilot who may well have been lost whilst dropping supplies to advancing Allied troops on the ground in Burma (Myanmar).
Buried at Taukkyan Cemetery, Myanmar.
5th April 1944
Phillip Jack Thomas
Achievements: Head Boy 1938. Bayard Prize, 1939. Blackheath Cup 1939.Cricket Captain 1939. Cricket Batting Cup 1939.
School Years: 1929-39
Age: 23
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: Died as the 11th Sikhs advanced into Burma (Myanmar).
Remembered on Rangoon Memorial
21st May 1944
Arthur Frank Sanders Somers
Known Family Information: Son of Arthur and Phyllis Somers of Mitchens, Chislehurst Road, Bromley
School Years: 1932-38
Age: 24
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Brother of Derek. Possibly a Spitfire pilot. Died at the time the Allies were breaking out from the Anzio beach head.
Buried at the Anzio Beach Head Cemetery.
3rd June 1944
Walter Harold Mitchell
Known Family Information: Son of Isaiah Edward and Eleanor Whitworth Mitchell who had worked as doctors at the London Missionary Society in Hong Kong. Eleanor was a noted photographer.
School Years: 1922-33
Service: Army
Possible Cause of Death: He appears to have died in action around the Anzio Beach Head.
Buried at Anzio Beach Head Cemetery
30th July 1944
James Dallas Black
School Years: 1926-35
Age: 27?
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Night Patrol 96 from West Malling. Crew bailed out over Boulogne having been caught in anti-aircraft flak.
Remembered at Runnymede.
4th August 1944
Peter John Hunter
Known Family Information: Son of Clarence and Madeline Hunter, Welling Way, Bexley. Husband of Joyce Hunter
School Years: 1934-39
Age: 20
Service: Fleet Air Arm
Possible cause of Death: Pilot of an aircraft ‘based’ on HMS Victorious which was docked in Colombo at the start of the month. ‘Lost at sea’, the assumption made is he did not return from a mission.
Remembered on the Lee-on-Solent Navy Memorial.
13th August 1944
School Years: 1920-22
Age: 34
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: According to the online War Memories Project, Paul was a career soldier and Major in the East Yorkshire Regiment who had served in Palestine and Africa. He died as the Allies advanced through Normandy with the East Yorks involved in heavy fighting near Tinchebray. According to www.ww2talk, Paul had only arrived the previous day.
Buried at St Charles de Percy, in Calvados, France
29th August 1944
Known Family Information: Lived in Crown Woods Way, Eltham.
School Years: 1918-19
Age: 40
Service: Civilian
Known cause of Death: Died at work in Eltham High Street when a V1 rocket bomb landed on the family garage. Now the site of Ancaster, Nissan showroom.
Buried in Woolwich Cemetery.
9th September 1944
Leon Eustace Arthur Clive-Harris
Known Family Information: Son of Leon Williams Clive-Harris and Ethel Clive-Harris, of Bromley Road, Catford.
School Years: 1932-37
Age: 25
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: At this time, the Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey) 2/6th Battalion were moving against the German's Gothic Line in Northern Italy.
Remembered on the Cassino Memorial.
19th September 1944
Stanley Wallace Elford
School Years: 1927-33
Age at Death: 28
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: Died three months after D-Day in Normandy.
Buried at Bayeux.
24th September 1944
Known Family Information: Son of Leopold and Ada Kiff, of Roundtable Road, Hither Green.
School Years: 1934-39
Age: 21
Service: Army. Trained Glider Pilot
Known cause of Death: He was enlisted in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps but volunteered for airborne forces and trained as a glider pilot who died in the Arnhem landings (Operation Market Garden). Initially given a field burial, he was later re-interred.
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25th or 26th September 1944
Frank William Taylor
School Years: 1929-24
Age: 25
Service: Trained Glider Pilot
Known cause of Death: Glider pilot who died in the Arnhem landings (Operation Market Garden)
Remembered on the Groesbeek Memorial.
16th October 1944
Noel Jeffreys Vernede Church
School Years: 1923-32
Age: 32
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: Died near Calais after the town was liberated. As Noel was in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and probably handling munitions, it is an assumption there was an accident.
Buried at Calais Canadian War Cemetery.
24th October 1944
George Sutton Lefeaux
School Years: 1927-30
Age: 23
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: George was in the Royal Artillery but his second regiment was the West Kents. In 1944 they were taking part in the attack on Monte Cassino. His death in October is after the conclusion of the battle. Possibly died near Rimini?
Remembered on the Cassino Memorial.
10th November 1944
Known Family Information: Of Winnipeg, Canada. Husband of Sanchia.
School Years: 1933-39
Age: 21
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Pilot of a Wellington taking part in Operation Endicote. The aircraft failed to return to base and was later found crashed on a hillside.
Buried at Bari, Italy.
15th November 1944
Albert William Hawkes
Known Family Information: Son of William and Anne Hawkes of New Eltham.
School Years: 1934-39
Age: 21
Service: Royal Air Force
Known cause of Death: One of a crew of an Anson that came down in the Atlantic near the coast of Canada.
Buried at Sherwood Cemetery, Prince Edward Island.
18th November 1944
Anthony Ransom Pickard
Known Family Information: Son of Alfred Harold and Winifred Sarah Pickard, of Wellmeadow Road, Hither Green.
School Years: 1933-40
Age: 21
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: A Royal Engineer and team of bridge builders who died as the Allies advanced across the Netherlands.
Buried at Woensel Cemetery near Eindhoven.
24th December 1944
Robert Horace Leopold Posgate
School Years: 1921-29
Achievements: Awarded the MBE in 1942 for his part in trying to rescue one of the crew of a burning Wellington that had crashed near Swaffham in Norfolk. Robert was in the same cohort as Mervyn Peake. In ‘Mr Loftus’, a play and the final piece of work created by Peake, which remained unpublished until 2014, Posgate is the name of one of the characters. Coincidence?
Age: 31
Service: Army
Cause of death unknown: Robert was a Major in Royal Artillery and attached to the Royal Engineers at the time of his death. It is not known why he was in Egypt when the war had moved on. As he is buried at Suez, it is an assumption that he was at the large base at Ismalia. The British did maintain a large and increasingly unpopular presence around the Nile Delta in order to protect the Suez Canal. He was the only person who died on that day and was buried at Suez therefore a further assumption is that he died of illness.
Buried at Suez cemetery.
1945
6th February 1945
Peter William Wilks
School Years: 1937-44
Age: 18
Service: The youngest former student to die. Peter was a ‘Bevin Boy’.
Known cause of Death: His wish had been to serve like many Elthamians in either the RAF or Fleet Air Arm. Instead he was sent to work in the coal mines. He was crushed by a runaway coal truck on his first day working at Yorkshire Main Colliery, near Doncaster. Died alongside 15 year old Harold Wilson.
Buried in Sidcup
20th February 1945
Alan Thomas Bartlett Ford
School Years: 1925-29
Age: 32?
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: Possibly died as the Allies advanced through the Netherlands.
Buried at Mook War Cemetery.
21st February 1945
Eric Henry Liddell
Known Family Information: Scotsman who followed his father into missionary work in China.
Achievements: Cricket Captain 1919. Rugby Captain 1918-1920. Blackheath Cup winner 1918. Olympic Gold medallist, 1924. Scotland International Rugby player.
School Years: 1908-19
Age: 43
Service: Civilian
Known cause of Death: Remained in China after the Japanese invasion. Interned. Died of a brain tumour.
Buried in China.
28th February 1945
Howard Cyprian Pinkham
School Years: 1930-34
Age: 24
Service: Merchant Navy
Known cause of Death: Crew member of S.S. Sampa which struck a mine off North Foreland. Howard died of his injuries in hospital.
Buried in Hither Green Cemetery, the only Old Elthamian sailor who was buried in Britain.
6th March 1945
Peter Douglas Fisher
Son of Thomas and Kathleen Fisher of Knoll Road, Bexley.
School Years: 1930-39
Age: 23
Service: Army
Known Cause of Death He died of Kidney disease in Clatterbridge Hospital on the Wirral.
Buried at Bromborough St Barnabus Churchyard, Cheshire.
9th March 1945
Known Family Information: Son of Francis Philip and Eveline Maude Johns, Eltham.
School Years: 1923-32
Age: 31
Service: Army
Known cause of Death: A Royal Engineer who served as a commando with the SBS. Posthumously awarded the Military Cross due to his efforts in Burma, January 1945. Died two months later in Borneo. Maybe in another commando mission?
Buried at Kranji.
10th April 1945
Thomas Peter Lund
School Years: 1927-39
Age: 24
Service: Army
Possible cause of Death: Served in the West Yorkshire Regiment that was advancing towards Rangoon at the time of his death.
Buried at Taukkyan War Cemetery.
7th May 1945
Arthur Ruskin Jones
Known Family Information: Son of William and Elizabeth Jones of Surbiton.
School Years: 1915-18
Age: 42
Service: Civilian who had worked in shipping in South east Asia. Arthur volunteered to fight with the Malay Volunteer Forces.
Known cause of Death: Captured by the Japanese on 15th February, 1942. Died a POW of malaria.
Buried in Labuan War Cemetery
18th July 1945
Thomas Eric Bruce Wilson
Known Family Information: Son of Sidney and Rose Wilson. Husband of Florence Wilson, of Linden Lodge, Hurst Road, Bexley
School Years: 1919-24
Age: 36
Service: RAF
Cause of death unknown. Died in Queen Mary’s Hospital of a brain tumor.
Buried at St Mary’s, Bexley.
11th August 1945
Paul Bernard Tayler
Known Family Information: Son of John Bernard Tayler who was instrumental in the the development of farming cooperatives in China, brother of Gladys Yang.
School Years: 1926-32
Age: 31?
Service: Civilian.
Known cause of Death: He volunteered to fight in Malaya and died a POW.
Buried at Labuan Cemetery.
14th September 1945
Stanley Ronald Holland
School Years: 1933-38
Age: 23
Sevice: RAF
Cause of Death: One of the crew of a Liberator bomber that crashed on take-off in Salbani, India
Buried at Ranchi War Cemetery
29th January 1946
Cecil John Reeve
School Years: 1920-24
Age: 38
Service: Army
Cause of death unknown: Service personnel who died up to 31st December 1947 were entitled to a war grave.
Buried in Chennai.
8th November 1946
School Years: 1933-43
Age: 21
Service: RAF
Known cause of Death: Navigator on board Mosquito NT266 that came down on Pockley Moor in Yorkshire. The pilot, Dan Hallifax was retraining after five years as a Prisoner of War, three of those years spent in Colditz Castle. It was suspected that Pilot Officer Hallifax lost control of the Mosquito due to icing on the wings and the controls?
Cremated at South London Crematorium, Mitcham.
Final Word?
We will never know what people were going through in their final moments: aboard a broken burning ship slipping into icy Atlantic waters, trying to escape from a blazing bomber dropping from the sky, bullied beaten and brutalised on the Burma Railway by people who had a philosophy of life so different to you own. Some of us are old enough to have known people who went through all those experiences, and even luckier not to have had to experience it ourselves. This exercise tries to throw light on the life and death of those who did not make it to the end of the war. That then poses a further question; why do we not remember those who made it home? Do they not deserve some attention?
Thank you to Joanna Friel of the Chislehurst Society for kick-starting this piece of work, by allowing me join a team looking into the service personnel buried in Chislehurst. Jo deserves credit for unravelling the back history of William Pembroke and Walt Howorth and Doncaster Library for help tracking down the newspaper report on Peter Wilks Also thanks to Rocky and Grace at Glebe Football Club for showing an interest any giving space in the match day programmes to salute the lost Elthamians. Thanks also to Andrew Beattie and Mark Stickings for information and support. The following sites proved very useful and credit has to go to the ‘unknown’ people who provided the information.
Please send any comments, or additional information to us at glebefchistory@gmail.com