Sports day 1944

Roll of Honour: Lionel Lewis

Flight Lieutenant L. M. Lewis

Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

64331

Died on active service, 7 September 1944, England. Aged 44.

______________________________________________________

Lionel Lewis was a well known sportsman in Woking and lived at Fourth Bay, Westfield Road. He was captain of the Constitution Hill Hockey Club for 10 years and played regularly for the Old Boys Association cricket team.

Lionel was born in about 1900 in Aberdeen. His grandfather, Joseph Lewis was for many years manager of Woking Public Hall which staged theatrical events. Lionel’s father James Henry Lewis, and his mother Violet Aileen Lewis (who was from Cork in Ireland) were both locally renowned actors. By 1911 the family were living at Sunnyside, Royal Oak in Woking. Lionel had at least two younger brothers, George and Gerald. Gerald died in South Africa in 1938.

One of the first boys at the newly opened County School, Lionel left aged 17 and enlisted with a Rifle Regiment late in the First World War although it is unlikely that he saw active service. After the war he worked briefly for Harrods in London and then for 12 years with North Light Ltd. a company that imported eggs from Denmark.

In February 1939 Lionel volunteered for the RAFVR doing his training in the evenings after work. When war broke out he was called up to the Balloon Barrage and served in England and Scotland. He was later commissioned as Technical and Defence Officer. Such was his enthusiasm for the service that he undertook commando training at the age of 41.

Lionel relinquished his commission due to ill health in July 1944 and died at home 7 September. His well attended funeral was held at Brookwood Cemetery the following week. At the service Mr. F. Dixon, headmaster of Ripley CE School and a team mate at the hockey club read the following tribute in the euphemistic style of the day:

The game’s not lost,

Although the whistle’s gone,

The first half is completed

And the second half begun.

You played against the slope and the sun,

In that, you had no choice,

And when the final whistle sounds

You’ll hear the umpire’s voice

Well done!

Lionel Lewis is buried in Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking (grave 209599). He is also remembered on the Woking County Grammar School roll of honour located in Christ Church, Woking and the Woking library World War Two book of remembrance.

______________________________________________________

Last updated 21 December 2009

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Woking News and Mail

Woking County School magazine

Roll of Honour: Reginald Hopper

Bombadier R. F. Hopper

176 Field Regt. Royal Artillery

978785

Died on active service, 28 January 1944, England. Aged 28.

______________________________________________________

Reginald Frank Hopper was born in 1916 in Surrey. He was the son of William and Emma Hopper (nee Hodkinson) and the husband of Angela Constance Hopper of Byfleet. He died on active service 28 January 1944.

Reginald is buried in Byfleet (St. Mary) churchyard (grave 37).

______________________________________________________

Last updated 28 August 2009

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Roll of Honour: John Harding

Lieutenant J. A. L. Harding

HMLCG(L) 11 Royal Marines

Killed in action, 2 November 1944, Belgium.

______________________________________________________

John Allan Leap Harding was the eldest son of Francis Joseph Harding BEM and Mary Alice Harding of Gosport, Hampshire. Francis was Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy. Mary died some time in the mid thirties and John went to live with his aunt, Mrs Bouvard at the Bleak House Inn in Horsell. John attended Woking County school 1934-1939.

Before joining up in 1941 John was a clerk with the L.M.S. He was also a member of the Woking Electric Supply Co. Home Guard.

After enlisting he took part in the D-Day landings in June 1944.

From the time of its capture by the allies on September 4 1944 the Belgian inland port of Antwerp assumed immediate strategic importance while the Germans still held the channel ports. Heavily fortified German positions on the Dutch island of Walcheren at the mouth of the River Scheldt, blocked allied access to Antwerp some 50 miles inland. Access to Antwerp would complete allied supply lines for their advancing armies. 

Following the surrender of Zeebrugge on 2 November Montgomery activated Operation Infatuate, the assault on Walcheren.

RAF Bomber Command had bombed Walcheren during October breaching many of the dykes and turning the island into a vast lagoon. A three pronged attack on the island was planned with Canadians attacking from the east and commandos attacking Flushing (in the south) and Westkapelle (in the west).

John was with 4th Special Service Brigade in the attack on Westkappelle. The force of landing crafts and support ships left Oostende at 0315. As dawn broke conditions were clear and they were positioned off their objective by 0930. However heavy mists hung over the Belgian and Dutch airfields and limited the amount of air cover that could be provided.

The ships bombarded the German defences with everything at their disposal including the 15 inch guns of HMS Warspite, the guns of LCGs, the rockets of rocket LCTs and a squadron of rocket-firing Typhoons. The German defences held fire until the assault craft made for the shore.

                                                  

Landing craft approach Walcheren

John was killed when his landing craft was hit by a shell. 30 Craft and over 300 men were lost in the action.

John Harding is buried in Oostende New Communal Cemetery, Belgium (plot 9, row 6, grave 26). He is also remembered on the Woking County Grammar School roll of honour located in Christ Church, Woking and the Woking library World War Two book of remembrance.

______________________________________________________

Last updated 21 December 2009

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Woking News and Mail

Woking County School magazine

Roll of Honour: Stanley Futcher

Pilot Officer S. M. Futcher

106 Sqn. Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

177861

Killed in action, 5 July 1944, France. Aged 21.

______________________________________________________

Stanley Montague Futcher was born in Churchill, Somerset in 1923, the eldest son of Montague (from Exeter) and Catherine Futcher (nee Grose) who later lived in Bullbeggars Lane, Horsell. He was educated at Franklin House School in Palmers Green and Wood Green County School in London before the family moved to Woking where he then attended the County School from 1936. He left school in 1940 to work as a junior clerk in the Woking Branch of Barclays Bank.

In 1941 Stanley enlisted with the RAFVR and received his flight training in Canada. He was gazetted as Pilot Officer in June 1944 and was posted with 106 Sqn. Bomber Command based at RAF Metheringham in Lincolnshire. Guy Gibson, leader of the famous Dambusters raid had earlier been base commander.

In June 1944 the Germans launched a new terror weapon on southern England, the V-1 rocket or doodlebug. An unmanned flying rocket fired from ‘ski’ launch sites along the French and Dutch coasts. It was capable of mass and somewhat random destruction in populated areas.

Saint-Leu-d’Esserent in northern France was built on the chalk of Picardy. Near the town was an underground cave system which in the peaceful pre-war years had served to grow mushrooms. The Germans had adapted it as a hidden storage site for V-1 rockets.

News of the rocket depot was soon passed to British Intelligence by the French Resistance. On the evening of 4 July M. and Mme. Bonnaventure of St. Leu were going about their business as crossing keepers on the railway outside the depot gates. Had they been secretly listening to BBC radio that night they would have heard their names broadcast. Their surname had been chosen as a code to warn the local population of the impending bombing raid - ‘Ce soir nous irons a la bonne aventure’, (Tonight we go on a good adventure).

Back at Metheringham Lancaster ME832 took to the air at 2325. The massed formation of 231 Lancasters and 15 Mosquitos formed in the bright moonlit sky over England and headed out over the channel. ‘Bombs away’ was planned for 0145.

Once over France the Luftwaffe began to harass the formation in the clear skies. This was no ‘milk run’. Two Lancasters (of 463 and 57 Sqn.) were lost. At 0130 ME832 became the third bomber lost that night. It was shot down and crashed into woodland 2 km SW of the village of St Germain-le-Poterie.* Only one of the crew of seven survived. Thirteen Lancasters were lost that night including two from 103 Sqn.

The crew of ME832 were as follows:

Pilot Officer Stanley Futcher - Aged 21 from Woking. KIA.

Sgt. (Flt. Eng.) Ronald Bentley - Aged 21 from Ossett, Yorkshire. KIA.

Flt. Sgt. (Nav.) Francis Stokeld - KIA.

Flt. Sgt. O. J. McNaughton (RCAF) - Survived and evaded capture.

Sgt. James Kearney - Aged 20 from County Antrim. KIA.

Flying Officer (Air gunner) - William Ramsay - Aged 23 from Edinburgh, married. KIA.

Sgt. (Air gunner) Arthur Bradley - Aged 21 from West Hartlepool. KIA.

*In 1993 family members of the crew erected a memorial to the men of ME832 at the site of the crash. It can be seen here.

Stanley Futcher has no known grave and is remembered on the Air Force Memorial, Runnymede, Surrey (panel 211) and on the Woking County Grammar School roll of honour located in Christ Church, Woking.

______________________________________________________

Last updated 4 July 2010

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Woking News and Mail

Woking County School magazine

www.lostbombers.co.uk

Roll of Honour: Ernest Edlin

Lance Sergeant E. D. Edlin BEM

2nd Bn. Suffolk Regt.

5438517

Killed in action, 25 January 1944, India. Aged 37.

______________________________________________________

Ernest Daniel Edlin was born in Woking in 1907. His father Charles was a butcher from Harefield in Middlesex and his mother Florence was from Windsor. Ernest had an older brother (Frederick) and two older sisters (Ethel and Gladys), another sibling died in infancy. In 1911 the family lived at Melbourne Villas, Ellen (?) Street, Woking.

At the outbreak of war the 2nd Bn. Suffolk Regt. were posted to Mhow in India. They spent much of the next three years on policing duties. Over this period the regiment was severely depleted in numbers, firstly due to illness (more than half the battalion contracted malaria) and secondly as men, keen to see some action, asked to be transferred to front line units such as the 151st Parachute Battalion.

Ernest was awarded the BEM in 1941 for gallantry.

In October 1943 the battalion was finally on the move. They sailed from Madras aboard the SS Ethiopia bound for Chittagong (in what is now Bangladesh) and then marched for a week to Waybin in modern day NE India.

On 24 January 1944 the 2nd Battalion attacked a Japanese outpost that had been giving them sporadic trouble since the beginning of the month. At first they were driven back by machine gun fire from previously unlocated bunkers, together with mortar fire and grenades. After four days of fighting the battalion eventually took the position and managed to dig in but continued attacks from nearby outposts forced them to withdraw soon after. Ernest died on the second day of fighting.

The circumstances surrounding his British Empire medal are a little confusing. He is noted as BEM on his Commonwealth War Graves Commission entry yet the only Edlin gazetted as receiving a BEM between 1930 and 1946 is Ernest Edlin, a fitter at Vickers Armstrongs Ltd. in December 1944.

Ernest Edlin has no known grave and is remembered on the Rangoon Memorial, Myanmar (face 7) and on the Woking County Grammar School roll of honour located in Christ Church, Woking.

______________________________________________________

Last updated 29 August 2009

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Roll of Honour: Ronald Donohoe

Sergeant R. L. Donohoe

5 Field Ambulance, West African Army Medical Corps RWAFF

7364397

Died 7 February 1944. Aged 24.

______________________________________________________

Centre forward and top scorer with the school first XI in 1934 and noted as being an ‘excellent shot with both feet and has used his head very well indeed’.

Ronald Leigh Donohoe (formerly of the Royal Army Medical Corps) died on 7 February 1944 aged 24.

He was the son of Edward Ernest and Florence Jane Donohoe (nee Leigh) of Netley Abbey,  Hampshire.

Ronald Donohoe has no known grave and is remembered on the Rangoon Memorial, Myanmar (face 18) and on the Woking County Grammar School roll of honour located in Christ Church, Woking.

______________________________________________________

Last updated 6 October 2009

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Roll of Honour: Alfred Cox

Lieutenant A. E. Cox

6th Bn. Royal Norfolk Regiment

197120

Died in enemy hands, 21 September 1944, Philippines. Aged 23.

______________________________________________________

Alfred Edwin Cox was born in 1922. The son of William Hugh and Sarah Louisa Cox of Bisley, Surrey and the brother of Annie (known to her friends and family as ‘Nan’). Nan was married to Thomas ‘Boyk’ Johnson (q.v.).

Alfred attended the William Ellis Foundation School in Gospel Oak in north London before joining the County School in September 1937 to study for his Civil Service exams. He left school in June of the following year to work with Westminster Bank in Threadneedle Street.

On June 17 1940 Alfred volunteered with the Young Soldiers Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment and received his commission in July 1941. 

After two years of training 20 year old Fred left Glasgow with his regiment aboard an American troop ship at the end of October 1941. The long route to the Far East was taken via Nova Scotia, Trinidad, Cape Town and Mombassa and they arrived in Singapore on 9 January 1942. Unfortunately their heavy equipment sailed via Bombay and did not arrive in Singapore until 15 February, just in time for the surrender.

The Norfolk's were soon in the front line attempting to halt the Japanese advance along the Malayan peninsula. They took part in the rear guard action at the Battle of Maur some 120 miles north of Singapore. It was to be the final battle of the Malay Campaign which subsequently ended with the fall of Singapore.

It is unclear at which point Fred was taken prisoner. The Norfolk's retreated to Singapore and were present when it fell on 15 July. Their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Ian Lywood who was hospitalised at the Alexandra Barracks with malaria, was murdered by the Japanese together with some 200 patients and staff.

For the next two years Fred Cox was in Japanese hands at Camp No. 2 at Songkurai in Thailand. Whilst there he contracted typhoid.

On 4 July 1944 Fred Cox and 1,285 other men were transported to Singapore and marched to the quayside where the Hofuku Maru waited. The men were British prisoners captured in Singapore and Dutch prisoners from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Some of the survivors were to later claim they had been on board the ship in the harbour since February.

The Hofuku Maru was a 5,825 ton cargo ship built about 1918. She was also variously known as the Fuji Maru or the Toyofuku Maru. She measured about 385 feet long and 51 feet at her beam. She was one of the unmarked POW transport ships used to take prisoners and troops to Japan - these ships were later known as ‘hell ships’. Once at sea these unmarked ships were at the mercy of allied attacks.

                                           

The Hofuku Maura

(Copyright National Maritime Museum)

Once the men had been herded aboard and then down into the hold of the ship all the ladders leading to the upper decks were destroyed and the hatches were battened down. The Hofuku Maru sailed out of Singapore harbour as part of convoy SHIMI-05. The convoy consisted of ten ships, five of which carried a total of about 5,000 POW’s making this the largest shipment of prisoners by the Japanese in WW2. The destination was Formosa (now Taiwan) where the men were to provide slave labour in the copper mines of Takao. It was to be a journey of some 3,000 miles.

The convoy reached Miri in Borneo on 8 July. The Hofuku Maru then left the convoy and sailed on to the Philippines unescorted. She limped into Manilla harbour on 19 July with engine trouble. She was laid up in the harbour for over two months as the engines were repaired. The prisoners still kept below decks except when receiving rations, suffered terribly. Heat, hunger and thirst took its toll. Almost all caught beri-beri or dysentery. Those not expected to last the journey were put ashore to face an uncertain fate.

Some of the sick were operated on below decks. In his book, ‘Hell In Five’, Jack Symon a comrade of Fred’s in the Royal Norfolk Regiment describes such an incident,

    ‘In that time our doctor on board who was Welsh performed an operation on one of our soldiers, something had gone wrong with his inside. This was done by candlelight in the hold and we all watched this being done. What an experience that was, to see a man’s whole stomach just lying there. Fortunately he recovered and great praise was given to our doctor, unfortunately the doctor himself died on that ship’.

On 20 September the Hofuku Maru left Manilla as part of convoy MATA-27. Of the eleven ships in the convoy she was the largest and the only one carrying prisoners. The following day the convoy had made slow progress, hugging the coast for fear of an allied attack, they had made just 80 miles.

Fast Carrier Task Force TF 38 commanded by Rear Admiral Marc Mitscher was the main strike force of the United States Navy. Spotter planes from one of her carriers came across the Hofuku Maru convoy on the morning of 21 September and a full scale attack was soon launched. The Hofuku Maru presented a large target for the force of almost 100 torpedo bombers. At about 10.30 a.m. she received direct hits from two ariel torpedoes and three bombs. She split in two and sank within five minutes.

Alfred was one of 1,047 prisoners who drowned, trapped below decks. The planes then turned their attention to the rest of the convoy and sank the remaining ten ships. Some survivors were picked up by a US submarine but the remainder swam ashore only to be re-captured by the Japanese.

The Official Chronology of the US Navy in World War Two notes the Hofuku Maru (under its alternative name of Toyofuku Maru) as being an ‘army cargo ship’.

On 9 December 1946 it was gazetted that HM The King approved that Alfred be mentioned in dispatches in recognition of his ‘gallant and distinguished services whilst a prisoner of war’.

                                               

Fred Cox’s body was never recovered. He is remembered on the Singapore Memorial (column 47) and on the Woking County Grammar School roll of honour located in Christ Church, Woking. Fred was 23 years old.

______________________________________________________

Last updated 1 September 2009

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The Butterworth Collection

Special thanks to Nan Wareham for the photo of Alfred

Roll of Honour: Keith Cornish

Lance Corporal K. A. Cornish

Royal Armoured Corps (Nottinghamshire Yeomanry)

14318909

Died on active service, 19 November 1944, Germany. Aged 20.

______________________________________________________

Keith Arthur Cornish died on 19 November 1944 aged just 20.

He was the son of Arthur Frederick and Grace Elizabeth Cornish (nee Warren) of Addlestone, Surrey.

Keith Cornish is buried in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, near Kleve, Germany (grave 46.k.17). He is also remembered on the Woking County Grammar School roll of honour located in Christ Church, Woking.

______________________________________________________

Last updated 20 December 2009

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

School speech day 1944

Roll of Honour: Montgomery Baker

Lieutenant M. H. A. Baker

1772 Sqn., HMS Ringtail

Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

Killed on active service, 29 July 1944, England. Aged 24.

______________________________________________________

Montgomery Baker was born about 1920, the son of Albert and May Baker of Ottershaw. Albert was a school teacher from Hittisleigh in Devon and May was from Mitcham in Surrey.

Montgomery served with 1772 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm which was formed at HMS Ringtail (part of Royal Naval Air Station Burscough, Lancashire) in May 1944. The squadron was equipped with Fairey Firefly two seater fighters. Much of the time was spent practicing  carrier landings on HMS Empress.

                         

Fairey Firefly of 1772 Sqn.

On 29 July 1944 Montgomery was the observer aboard Firefly Z1958 which was piloted by Lieutenant Commander A. H. D. Gough (commanding officer of 1772 Squadron). About 17 miles west of Southport over the Irish Sea the aircraft was involved in a mid air collision with Firefly Z1956 also of 1772 Squadron. Z1956 was piloted by Lieutenant M. J. C. Wright with Lieutenant J. G. C. Sloan as observer. All four men bailed out but Baker and Sloan were killed. Montgomery’s body was never recovered.

Montgomery Baker is remembered on the Lee-on-Solent Memorial, Hampshire (bay 5, panel 4) and on the Woking County Grammar School roll of honour located in Christ Church, Woking.

                                             

Lee-on-Solent Memorial

(Copyright CWGC)

______________________________________________________

Last updated 18 August 2009

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

www.naval-history.net