JUNE 2023

Nothing to report in my role as Chairman for this month, just another reminder that our next Social evening is on FRIDAY 02 JUNE 2023 @ 7:30pm in the Village Hall when local historian Phil Badcott will be providing a humorous and light-hearted look at anecdotes and folklore from the nineteenth century with his talk entitled ‘Folklore of Bygone Devon’. As always, admission is free to Members with just a nominal cost of £3 for non-members.

That’s it for now – so take care and read on once again with the wartime memories of the late David Best. Derek .. Chairman MLHG

Part 3-The First Bombs & Air Raids.

The first bombs to drop in Devon, and amongst the earliest in England, fell on 6th July 1941 at Galmpton, where production of Admiralty launches had started and at precisely 8.45 a.m. on 10th July a stick of nine high expolosive bombs fell at the Beacon straddling the roadway and damaging a small gypsy caravan. (NB. Giving the year as 1941 may have been a typing error or lapse of memory on David’s part as the Group has copies of the original Reports of the Torbay Air Raid Precautions Joint Committee, which gives the year of these first raids as 1940.)

I was half a mile away, dawdling to school with two girl evacuees who had been billeted on a neighbour nearby.  During the explosions we lay back in the hedge wondering what was going to happen next and the younger of the girls started to cry.  After a while the noise of the aeroplane faded away so we picked ourselves up and went to school.

Later in the day we went along to see what had happened, and found several policemen keeping a crowd at bay and guarding some holes in the fields.  The next day the holes were still there so they lost interest and went away, leaving the craters to the kids, who dug out bits of shrapnel for souvenirs.

On 11th July, ten bombs fell at Churston, again with no warning and on the 15th it was Brixham’s turn when four high explosive bombs were dropped, one of which sank the coal boat “City of London”.

This was the period following the Battle of Britain and things were really beginning to hot up locally when at 6.44 p.m. on Tuesday 20th August, two bombers and a fighter dropped a stick of bombs on Newton Abbot railway station doing an incredible amount of damage.  In 1941 events in the war had taken a turn for the worse and this incident at the time was heavily censored.  The full extent of the damage was even kept from local people, but 14 people were killed, 15 seriously injured, a railway engine wrecked and extensive damage was done to the station and track.

The winter of 1940/41 brought a heavy fall of snow.  At the start of the war the beach floats had been stacked at the Holiday Camp and put into “mothballs” for the duration; the troops were quick to see alternative possibilities and used them as sledges until the snow melted.  Inevitably they all finished up at the bottom of fields where they rotted away and disintegrated over the next few years.  Shortly after this, the troops vacated the camp and were replaced by girls of the ATS who stayed for about six months.
After the early months of 1941, it was becoming clear that Torbay was becoming one of the areas for enemy activities and in that year there were sixteen enemy raids during which a great number of houses in Torquay and Paignton were damaged.  These raids were overshadowed by the heavy raids on Plymouth on the nights of 21st and 22nd March, and the glow in the sky from the burning city was clearly visible from Marldon.

After these raids a battery of heavy anti-aircraft guns was positioned at the Beacon, no doubt with the intention of picking off some of the enemy aircraft as they came in.

More to follow….