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THE NOTES I SUMMER 2020
DUNSTONIANS LOOK BACK
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TWO WARTIME EVACUATIONS
W
ith September 1939’s final British Note to Hitler demanding restraint on Poland ignored, Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain was forced to admit grimly to the nation that ‘“We have received no such undertaking and, consequently this country is at war with Germany. These words may have become familiar to later generations but for those at St Dunstan’s at the time, and their parents, they proved the signal for an immediate evacuation to Reigate and, for the College buildings at Catford, their later requisitioning by the Army as a wartime regional command centre. Little respite was seemingly in sight. September 1944 saw our evacuees on a second move – from Reigate further afield to South Wales – simply compounding their long exile from Catford. Both were life-changing events for many ODs some of whom have, often years later, put pen to paper in recalling their experiences. We give here the just some of our evacuees’ thoughts, reactions and reminiscences published in past editions of OD Notes.
Bob Rangecroft
1939 march to Forest Hill R J Coombs (’40) writing in 1996
‘I was grieved to read of the death of E V ‘Vic’ Wobschall (’43 – d. 1995). Vic and I headed the march of our form from the College to Forest Hill Station during the 1939 evacuation. Subsequently, we shared billets in Reigate until I left at the end of 1940. Post-war we often played in the same rugby and cricket teams. He was one of many good men who died last year’.
Round ball football R H ‘Reg’ Braddon (’43 – died 2015) writing in 2001
Braddon was following up earlier OD Notes items on informal soccer at St Dunstan’s and the time-honoured gibe about it being a game for gentlemen played by hooligans as opposed to rugby, a game for hooligan’s played by gentlemen. ‘We certainly played soccer at Reigate in the early days of the evacuation including, I think, the odd formal match, so it obviously had official blessing at the time. I recall A J V ‘Arthur’ George (’43) to whom I sat next in classes showing unsuspected prowess as a full back – perhaps gained from watching techniques at The Valley which, it seems, he used to do frequently. For my part as a natural ball-player, I fluctuated between goalkeeper and outside left! ‘Another couple of other points in the last edition of the Notes reminded me of Reigate days. I noticed a mention of P R ‘Peter’ Porter-Smith (’41 – d 1941). We were in the same form and the same billet (and, I seem to recall, bed) in South Park, Reigate, for a few weeks at the beginning of the War. The elderly house-owners, the Landmarks, soon tired of us and we were billeted elsewhere –
in the early days one tended to be moved around quite a lot. ‘My final billet was with form-mates Brian Cannon – he visited us out of the blue a few years ago when we lived in St Albans - and C J C ‘Cliff’ Angel (’40) who returned home from Reigate after a few months and whose death in 2000 was also reported in the last Notes. ‘Another form-mate, R P ‘Reg’ Wellsman (’43), joined Brian and me in the very large house owned by Mr & Mrs Ledger in a fashionable part of Reigate where I stayed until I left school in 1943’.
At home with the Lancasters T A ‘Tony’ Riddle (’42 – died 2005) writing in 2002
Riddle was prompted to write by a muchdelayed notice in the Spring Notes of the death of F M ‘Felix’ Arscott (’40), Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at the University of Manitoba in Canada in 1996. ‘On arrival in Reigate we two were the last to be billeted and spent the first night in a semi-detached house in a road I cannot now remember. The following morning’s walk to explore our new surroundings was interrupted by sirens and, on returning to our billet, we were met outside and told to collect the few belongings we had been allowed to bring from home. ‘No-one seemed to know what to do with us but after an hour or two we were taken off to a very nice detached Victorian house in Evesham Road, the home of the Lancasters – he the Town Clerk of Reigate and Chief Civil Defence Officer and responsible for billeting. They had taken
