The last couple of weeks have been mostly damp and dismal and the year ends with another misty and murky afternoon in South Somerset, here are a some pleasing skyscapes from earlier in the month.
 |
| Some rare afternoon blue sky on December 2. |
 |
| Contrails in the evening sunset on December 2. |
 |
| Afternoon sky on December 6 with Storm Barra due the next day. |
 |
| Late afternoon sky over the Blackdown Hills on December 6. Storm Barra due the next day. |
No leaves on the trees at Snowden Hill on the A30 west of Chard in South Somerset, but lots of starlings.
I took this photo while on an expedition to the farm shop nearby.
The bare branches make an interesting pattern against a very dull, early afternoon, greyish blue sky.
 |
| Starlings in the trees at Snowdon Hill, near Chard, South Somerset. |
Eighty years ago this week RAF night fighter ace Richard Playne Stevens was killed while on a night fighter intruder sortie. He is buried in the British Cemetery at Bergen Op Zoom in the Netherlands. His wartime career was a remarkable one brought about, it seems, by tragedy.
I reproduce below the entry
in Aces High (Neville Spearman, 1966)
by Christopher Shores and Clive Williams.
“Stevens, from Ditchling, was
a civil pilot before the war, flying 400 hours at night on the newspaper run
between London and Paris. He joined the
RAF after the outbreak of war, aged 32, the maximum age for pilot training, and
was posted as a pilot officer to 151 Squadron at the end of 1940 to fly
Hurricanes at night on intruder missions.
His wife and children were
killed on one of the early night blitzes on Manchester, and from then on he flew
with complete disregard for his own life.
His method was to search the
sky for the greatest concentration of anti-aircraft shell bursts, and fly there
to find the enemy. He pressed his
attacks home so close that on one occasion an exploding bomber covered his
wings with bits of debris and blood, which he refused to have removed. Naturally, rumours about such a pilot were
rife, and it was said by some that he screamed like a man demented whenever he
contacted enemy bombers, but whether or not this was a true statement cannot be
confirmed.
On the 15 January 1941 he
claimed the squadron’s first night victories, destroying a Do 17 and a He
111. He was only the third pilot to
destroy two in one night, and he was awarded a DFC. He then had ear trouble and was unable to fly
for a while.
On 8 April he shot down two
He 111s and two nights later got a Ju 88 and a He 111. He then received a Bar to his DFC.
He destroyed another He 111
on 19 April, and on 7 May got two more.
He claimed another He 111 and a second probably destroyed on 10 May, and
on 13 June destroyed one more. He
damaged one on the 22 June and on 3 July shot down a Ju 88. He got one further victory, and then on 22
October got another Ju 88, his fourteenth and last confirmed claim.
At this time he was the RAF’s
top scoring night fighter, leading all the radar-assisted pilots by a fair
margin, his pre-war night-flying experience and his lack of any consideration
for his own survival accounting for this.
In November he was posted as
a flight commander to 253 Squadron, but it had been considered for some while
that the way he was flying there could only be one end. He received a DSO on 12 December, but three
nights later failed to return from an intruder sortie.”
Flight Lieutenant Richard
Playne Stevens was the son of Sidney Agar Stevens and Isabel Dora Stevens. His late wife was Olive Mabel Stevens of
Barwick, Somerset.
Peter Hitchens’ The Phoney Victory – The World War Two Illusion (I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2018) is an extremely thought provoking read which argues that Great Britain did not have much of a victory in WW2. By the end of hostilities this country was broke, the Empire unsustainable, and the Poles - for whom we went to war - were left under Soviet communist rule and were not even allowed to participate in any victory parades.
He also exposes the harsh
reality of Churchill’s romantic idea of the “special relationship” with the
USA. Churchill’s flawed decision making
and his manipulation of events come under scrutiny as well.
The book chapter by chapter.
Ch.1. The British
Guarantee to Poland of March 1939.
Mr Hitchens argues that there
were some in the British political establishment who wanted war with Germany at
all costs. He suggests that one of the reasons
was to prove Britain’s standing as a “great power”, another was that “something
must be done” to stop German expansion.
The British guarantee to
Poland was a pretext for war with Germany, and Germany alone. It excluded coming to Poland’s aid if attacked
by Russia.
Ch.2 Plucky little Poland.
Hitchens points out that
Poland was not a paragon of democratic virtue.
It was governed by a military dictatorship and was passively
anti-Semitic. Furthermore, after Czechoslovakia
was occupied by Germany, parts of that stricken country were seized by Poland,
with Hitler’s approval.
Ch.3 Appeasement and Pacifism . . . or “The
Left has its Cake and Eats it.”
In the late 1930s Tory Prime
Ministers Baldwin and Chamberlain had begun building up the RAF and RN for
defence, but the British economy could not support the spending required for a
large “continental army”. Labour and the
Left opposed such defensive rearmament, but hypocritically campaigned against
appeasement.
Ch. 4 The war we could not
afford.
With British rearmament under
way the government sought to buy armaments from the USA, but the USA refused to
give any loans or credit as Britain, and indeed France, had reneged on debts
owed to the USA following WW1.
Consequently, American politicians would only allow the sale of supplies
and war materials on a cash and carry basis.
By January 1941, after only 16 months of war, Britain had run out of
cash!
Ch.5 America First.
Of the British belief that
they have with the USA some sort of “benevolent and sweet-natured ‘special
relationship’”, Hitchens has this to say: “Not
only is there no such thing, there is a case for saying that the USA has often
singled this country out for exceptionally harsh treatment”.
Twice in the book he tells us
that in 1919 Woodrow Wilson warned the British to stop imagining Americans were
their cousins, or even Anglo-Saxons.
As in the twentieth century the
USA became evermore economically powerful it grew increasingly resentful of
British naval supremacy, and had absolutely no intention of going to war to
protect or save the British Empire. In
fact, I would point out that Theodore Roosevelt once advocated seizing Canada,
a British Dominion, by force.
Hitchens also notes that: “If Hitler had not voluntarily declared war
on the USA after Pearl Harbour, it is far from certain that America would ever
have become directly involved in the European War”. I have heard similar comments from American
historians and commentators in Ken Burns’ documentary The Roosevelts – An Intimate History, and Jeremy Isaacs’ The World at War.
Ch.6 The Invasion That
Never Was.
Hitchens suggests that both
Hitler and Churchill did not take an invasion of Britain seriously. As Hitchens states: “The idea of an invasion, never a reality, suited both men at the
time. For Hitler it was a way of
persuading a battered, unhappy British population to press their leaders to
give in. For Churchill, more
successfully, it was a way to raise morale, production and military
effectiveness by creating a constant atmosphere of tension and danger”.
Mr Hitchens informs us that
as early as 12 July 1940 Jock Colville, Churchill’s private secretary,
overheard Churchill in conversation with leading British generals stating that
he doubted whether invasion was a serious menace, but intended to give the
opposite impression.
After naval losses in the
Norwegian Campaign, the Germans did not have, if they ever did, enough cruisers
and destroyers to protect an invasion on a narrow front, let alone a broad
front. On 7 August 1940, before the
Battle of Britain began in earnest, General Franz Halder expostulated,
according to Hitchens: “I regard their (his
naval counterparts) proposal as complete
suicide. I might just as well put those troops that have been landed straight
through a sausage machine.”
Hitchens also points to the decision taken, while the Battle of Britain was at its height, to despatch tanks and Hurricanes to the Middle East!
Ch.7 In Peril on the Sea.
This chapter is centred on
the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. Mr Hitchens seems unimpressed by its
outcome. Be that as it may, he ‘sails’
off all over the world to opine on Atlantic Convoys, British Mediterranean
strategy, convoying supplies of British military hardware to Russia, the
defence of Singapore and Malaya, and British obligations to Australia and New
Zealand.
Hitchens appears to support
A. J. P. Taylor (The Second World War and
its Aftermath) who submits both that Britain should have abandoned the
Mediterranean when Italy entered the war, and the attempt to build a strategic
bomber force. Mr Hitchens suggests that
the resources saved should have been used to protect Atlantic Convoys and
confront Japanese expansion in the Far East.
Such policies would have resulted in Britain not being engaged with
German land forces anywhere or being able to attack Germany itself from the
air. In such circumstances I question
whether there was any point in being at war with Germany at all.
Hitchens quotes A. J. P.
Taylor’s opinion that in 1941 Crete was lost for the lack of three fighter
squadrons. He also points out that the
defence of Singapore and Malaya would have been transformed if the 676 fighters
and 446 tanks sent by Churchill to Russia in 1941 had gone there instead. They are correct.
However, I would point out
that there were even more fighter aircraft available in 1941 than Hitchens and
Taylor were aware of. From the start of
1941 hundreds of Spitfires and Hurricanes from Fighter Command were being sent
almost daily on fruitless operations over northern France in an ineffective
attempt to divert Luftwaffe fighter groups from The East. In the course of that year over 462 British
fighter pilots were lost – more than in the Battle of Britain.* I suggest those pilots and aircraft would
have been of very much more use in Crete, the wider Mediterranean area, and the
Far East.
*Denis Richards, Royal Air Force 1939-1945 Vol 1, The Fight at Odds (HMSO 1953).
Ch.8 Gomorrah.
The title of this chapter was
the code name for RAF Bomber Command’s attack on Hamburg in the summer of
1943. Hitchens believes the policy of
carrying out such attacks on cities was immoral and ineffective. However,
he attaches no blame to the bomber crews themselves and his verdict on their
chief, Sir Arthur Harris, is very fair, as this extensive quote from the book
reveals:
“Not long after Dunkirk, the language of British
leaders began to take on a rather fearsome tone. Winston Churchill speculated in a letter of 8
July 1940 to his friend and Minister of Aircraft Production, the press magnate
Lord (Max) Beaverbrook, that an ‘absolutely devastating, exterminating attack
by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland’ would help
bring Hitler down. Arthur Harris, later
the chief of RAF Bomber Command, realised the significance of these
extraordinary words. Perhaps not wholly
trusting politicians to defend the actions they had ordered if they later
became unpopular or not respectable (as they did), he kept a copy of the
letter.
Harris commendably refused a peerage in 1946 because
postwar sensitivity had denied his bomber crews a campaign medal. Harris, though an unattractive man, emerges
from this with some integrity. When a
man of his sort was needed to pursue a bloody form of warfare without
hesitation, he was welcomed in the councils of the great and treated with
courtesy. When, later, a startled and
chastened world understood what he had actually done, he was urged to leave by
the tradesmen’s entrance. He made it
very clear that he knew what was happening, and despised those who had once
fawned on him and now dismissed him.
They had given him his mandate.
As far as he was concerned, they bore the ultimate responsibility.”
I would argue that Bomber
Command’s campaign was far from ineffective.
Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production, when
interviewed on Jeremy Isaacs’ The World
at War said that another six raids on German cities such as that carried
out on Hamburg would have ended the war.
He also considered that from 1943 the bombing of Germany was, in effect,
a “second front”.
Furthermore, Adam Tooze in
his The Wages of Destruction – The Making
and Breaking of The Nazi Economy (Penguin Books, 2007) writes of speeches
made by Speer in the autumn of 1943:
“Speer reminded his audience of his triumphant address
to the Sportspalast only a few months earlier, at which he had promised
increases in armaments production of 15 – 20 per cent per month. The RAF’s sustained attack on the Ruhr had
put paid to that. ‘Since the beginning
of the air attacks,’ Speer explained, ‘we have it is sure, had a slow rise in
production but only 3 to 5 per cent monthly.
That is absolutely insufficient’.
In fact, Speer was over-optimistic.
The monthly index of armaments showed no consistent increase whatsoever
in the second half of 1943.”
Ch.9 Orderly and Humane.
This chapter deals with the
‘ethnic cleansing’ of Germans from large parts of central Europe after the
‘Good War’.
My concluding thoughts.
Peter Hitchens suggests in The Phoney Victory that Britain entered
World War Two at the wrong time for the wrong reason with insufficient
finances and inadequate military resources, and then fought the war with a highly dubious strategy only to end
bankrupt with the Empire disintegrating, and a ‘pensioner’ of the USA. After such a devastating analysis, I find it
surprising, to put it mildly, that he thinks Winston Churchill was correct in
continuing the war in 1940!
The Somerset village of
Baltonsborough lies in countryside near the River Brue not far west of The Fosse
Way (A37).
The fields and meadows which
surround Baltonsborough are charmingly described by Paul Newman in his Somerset Villages (Robert Hale Ltd,
1986): “Visual titillation aside, the
country is passing fair. Apple orchards
abound, there are many fine stone barns and cobbled together bridges, plus
sufficient trees and hedgerows to hold monotony at bay. Undramatic country, tamed by thousands of
years of tree-felling, pasturing and ploughing, its charm becomes apparent in
summer when all the grasses, nettle patches and hedgerow life is astir and
burgeoning.
Baltonsborough is in the midst of this countryside,
south of Kennard Moor. An intricate
network of droves leads into the village which has several centres. The main part clusters around the old church,
which is thrust out into a meadow and beckons from the ragged willowy lanes.”
The village was once one of
the 12 hides, or manors, of Glastonbury Abbey so it seems fitting that St.
Dunstan, who was made abbot of Glastonbury in the tenth century, was born in
Baltonsborough sometime between 909 and 925.
While at Glastonbury Abbey, Dunstan demonstrated his prowess as a
drainage engineer. The River Brue used
to spread over the marshy meadows around Baltonsborough until Dunstan
instigated the building of a series of weirs and a ditch to drain the area.
The fame and wealth of
Glastonbury increased under Dunstan’s efficient and diligent supervision. Therefore it is no surprise that he
eventually became Archbishop of Canterbury where he tried to expand his ideas,
both religious and managerial, throughout Anglo-Saxon England.
Understandably,
Baltonsborough’s village church is named for St. Dunstan. Pevsner describes the church as: “Perpendicular and of no special
architectural interest. The most
handsome touch is the weather-vane on the w tower, with very scrolly iron-work
made by the local blacksmith early in the C19.
It stands on a pyramid roof rising behind the battlements of the tower.”
 |
| The Church of St. Dunstan in the Somerset village of Baltonsborough. |
 |
| The weather-vane on the tower of St. Dunstan's Church, Baltonsborough, Somerset. |
Baltonsborough’s war memorial
garden is at the junction of Church Lane and Martin Street at the southern
extremity of the village. A 15inch BL (breech loading) siege howitzer shell casing, of the type originally used by the Royal Navy, but passed to
the Army, was given to Baltonsborough by the National War Savings Committee in
recognition of the village’s contribution in raising money during Gun Week.
 |
| The war memorial garden in the Somerset village of Baltonsborough. |
The National War Savings
Committee was set up in 1916 to encourage communities to raise money for the
war effort. It was responsible for a
series of fund raising initiatives, including War Weapons Week, Tank Week and
Feed the Guns Week.
The memorial shell casing is
listed Grade 2 as according to Historic England: “It is a highly unusual and broodingly eloquent commemorative
monument”.
The shell was unveiled in
1922 at the same time as the traditional stone memorial cross. The plaque on the shell lists the names of the
68 who served, with a blue Maltese Cross marking the names of the six who did
not return.
 |
| The plaque on the 15inch shell casing in the war memorial garden at Baltonsborough in Somerset. Note the number of times the surname Bush appears - all appear to have survived! |
The traditional memorial
cross bears the names of the six who were killed in World War One and three
killed in World War Two. The name of Second
Lieutenant John Richings, Royal Tank Regiment, who died on 28 May 1942 aged 25,
was originally not included at the request of his family. However, his name appears to have been added
sometime after the year 2000. John
Somerset Richings is also remembered on the Alamein Memorial in Egypt. He was the son of the Revd Basil Grafton
Richings, and his wife Gwendolen, of Baltonsborough.
Our good friend L from Hampshire took this photo, in the churchyard of St. Mary’s in Portchester, of the Commonwealth War Grave of Private Frank Arthur Penn of The Pioneer Corps.
Private Penn died in the
Liverpool Road Military Hospital in Chester on the 20 January 1942. The hospital was a wartime one in use from
1940 to 1945.
Frank Arthur Penn was the son
of Mr and Mrs W. F. Penn of Wicor, Fareham.
William Penn died on 10 July 1948.
It is unusual to find the name of a father in the personal inscription
on the headstone of a Commonwealth War Grave.
 |
| The Commonwealth War Grave of Private Frank Arthur Penn at St. Mary's in Portchester. |
Almost 80 years ago at lunchtime on 26 October 1942 a lone German Junkers 88 bomber attacked the Devonshire coastal town of Seaton. The fast twin engine light bomber dropped a stick of bombs achieving a direct hit on Seafield House which stood on the sea front between Sea Hill and Castle Hill, only a short distance from the site of some of Seaton’s wartime coastal defences. A searchlight emplacement was positioned just 200 yards away below the cliffs, while on the cliff top was a coastal artillery battery which included two 6-pounder Hotchkiss anti-tank guns.
 |
| The World War Two searchlight emplacement on the sea front at Seaton in Devonshire. Its beam could illuminate a target up to five miles out to sea. A coastal artillery battery was sited on the cliff top above. |
Was the German bomber crew aiming for the artillery battery, or was their mission an indiscriminate attack on a seaside resort – one of the later Baedeker raids the Germans carried out in reprisal for RAF Bomber Command’s successful raids on Germany’s Baltic Ports?
 |
| The sea front at Seaton in Devonshire. The World War Two coastal artillery battery was sited just beyond the thatched structure on the skyline at the extreme left of the picture. |
The owner of Seafield House
was a retired army officer. Sadly, Major
and Mrs Cartwright were killed along with three others - a young WRNS officer
named Dorothy Downes Wilkin whose family lived at nearby Membury, a Miss
Florence Sercombe and an elderly lady by the name of Mrs Eleanor Ross.
A young lady of 14 named
Muriel Turl, who was “in service” and working in the kitchen when the house was
hit, had a remarkable escape. She was
buried in the rubble for four hours until rescued relatively uninjured. The two other members of the household staff,
the cook and the cleaner, had not turned up for work that day – a very
fortunate absence!
The Jubilee Clock Tower, erected
to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, stood behind and above Seafield
House. It survived the bombing although
the clock stopped at 1.20 pm precisely, the time of the raid, eventually being
repaired some years later.
Seafield House was not
rebuilt or replaced after its destruction.
Today the open space on which it stood allows a clear view from the sea
front up to the Jubilee Clock Tower and Seafield Gardens.
 |
| The Jubilee Clock Tower at Seaton in Devonshire. The steps and gardens leading to the Clock Tower occupy the site of Seafield House which was destroyed in the German air-raid of 26 October 1942. |
The Social Democratic Party holds its annual conference in London on November 6 and appears to have lined up an excellent group of speakers. Good to see that, among others, David Starkey is there along with Clair Fox, Rod Little and Patrick O’Flynn.
The party leader, William
Clouston will obviously be speaking – it was interesting, and noteworthy, that
he was interviewed on GB News recently.
Perhaps the SDP will undergo a resurgence if such prominence is given to
it on a regular basis.
As a supporter of the
establishment of a dedicated English Parliament I am pleased to note that the
SDP is in favour of such a policy. It
will be fascinating, and significant, if any of the speakers make any observations
on the issue.
I will not be voting for any
of the establishment parties again as they all appear to be singing from the
same woke/PC hymn sheet these days.
Therefore, as I sympathise with practically all of the SDP’s policies I will
be voting for them if ever they stand candidates, at whatever level of government,
in South Somerset.
The letters below appeared in the October 23 edition of The Week having first been published in The Daily Telegraph. It appears to me that air-source heat pumps are a waste of money and effort, and ground-source heat pumps are only viable if you have room on your land for 320 feet of trench – fine if you are fortunate enough to own “fields”!
Hate your heat pump?
To The Daily Telegraph.
I’m no expert, but I have had
personal experience of a heat pump during the past seven years. It was sourced and installed by a German
company. Does the Government know how
cumbersome they are, and how they dribble water? Ours is installed outside in our back yard,
as there’s no way we could accommodate such a large appliance inside our
home. We have a thriving moss patch
around it.
Do ministers know how they
guzzle electricity in colder weather in order to function at all, or how loud
they are? I’ve had to apologise to
neighbours many times over the years about the noise, which kicks in at the
most unexpected and inopportune times.
Maja Dijkstra, Glasgow.
Then buy a better one.
To The Daily Telegraph.
Maja Dijkstra perpetuates the
commonly held belief that all heat pumps are air-source, but this is not the
case. I have an excellent ground-source
heat pump, which provides abundant hot water and keeps the house warm, with
lower bills. It has done so for 13
years. Its disadvantages were its cost
and the inconvenience of installation: it required two 160 foot trenches to be
dug in our fields. However, if all new
houses had to have ground-source heat pump, the expense would be incorporated
into the cost of the home, and the work could be done by the builders. Air-source heat pumps are indeed noisy and
don’t work very well when it is really cold.
People buy them because they are cheaper and convenient to install – but
these appear to be their only advantages.
Elizabeth Jones, Chard, Somerset.
So it seems we will have to
give up our efficient gas boilers and install new systems using an expensive and
complicated technology in order to meet the Government’s “ambitious” net-zero-carbon
targets. Yet we live on an island made of coal which also contains an abundance
of shale gas. Unfortunately our
so-called Conservative Government led by Boris, and his wife, appear to be
fully supportive of Greta Thunberg and in step with the eco loons belonging to
Extinction Rebellion.
The ancient Somerset village of Buckland St. Mary, Buckland means land granted to the thanes by the Saxon Kings, stands 700 feet high on the Blackdown Hills.
A short drive along narrow
country lanes, not far from the A303, brings you into the village and its
incongruous, but impressive, Church of St. Mary. Incongruous because of the small size of the
community which it serves, yet impressive enough to be known as the “Cathedral
of the Hills”.
 |
| The Church of St. Mary in the Somerset village of Buckland St. Mary. |
The church was built between
1853 and 1863. It was designed by London architect Benjamin Ferry and paid for
by John Edwin Lance. It is the third
church to be built on the site. Lance,
from a well-to-do family, was rector of St. Mary’s from 1832 to 1885.
On arrival John Lance had
himself built a new rectory in the style of a Victorian Gothic mansion – today
it is known as Buckland House. When
finished the ground floor of the rectory had a hall, library, double drawing room, dining room,
parish room, kitchen, larder, pantry, butler’s pantry and bedroom. The first floor had nine bedrooms, a dressing
room, and a linen room with 4 attics above.
The house stood in 37 acres of glebe land and had a staff to match its
size and stature.
It was the death of his wife
which motivated Lance to have the church rebuilt. The finished building was described by
Pevsner as: “A noble incongruity, due to
the rector, the Rev. J. E. Lance. Large
with a substantial s w tower and in a style not at all du pays. Moreover far too large for a small and
scattered congregation.”
 |
| The s w tower of St. Mary's church in the Somerset village of Buckland St. Mary. |
 |
| The war memorial in the churchyard of St. Mary's, Buckland St. Mary, Somerset. |
Sadly a carter was killed
during the construction of the church.
He was carting materiel when his horses ran away; the wagon overturned
and the man was crushed to death beneath the stones. The story is on a stone in the churchyard
with this quaint warning: “May all
carters who read this take warning and never get in their wagon”. I could not find the stone on my stroll
around the church, but I am sure to visit Buckland St. Mary again and will have
another look.
However, I did come across
the grave of Lt. Col. John Conrad Pringle, Royal Engineers, who died in 1952 aged 71,
and that of his wife Ethel Gladys who was over 100 years old when she died in
1991. Perhaps the fresh air on the
Blackdowns accounted for the lady’s longevity?
 |
| The grave of Lt. Col. and Mrs John Conrad Pringle in the churchyard of St. Mary's in the Somerset village of Buckland St. Mary. |
The village of Stoke St. Mary in Somerset lies comfortably sheltered in the shadow of the northern slopes of the Blackdown Hills.
Agriculture was once the main
provider of work in the village, but now it is primarily a dormitory village
for the county town of Taunton which is only 2 miles away to the north-west.
Sadly the last pub in the
village, the Half Moon Inn, is closed and up for sale. It is a fine red-brick
building and was formerly a manse. When I strolled by on the road through the
village it was looking rather forlorn with its outside seating area showing
signs of neglect.
 |
| Stoke St. Mary's only pub, the Half Moon Inn, was closed when I passed by in September 2021. |
By contrast the unpretentious village Church of St. Mary has a very well cared for graveyard. Pevsner kindly describes St. Mary’s as having a: “Good two-staged C13 w tower. One w lancet and an uncommonly vigorously moulded tower arch. The chancel arch also has shafts and capitals of the C13.”
 |
| The Church of St. Mary in the Somerset village of Stoke St. Mary. |
In the churchyard is the devotedly tended Commonwealth War Grave of Sapper Alexander James Bussell, Royal Engineers, who died on 21 March 1947, aged 27. He was the son of Samuel and Helen Bussell of Stoke St. Mary, and the husband of Gladys Hazel Bussell of Taunton. The touching inscription on the gravestone, not visible in the photo, reads “THOUGHTS DRIFT BACK TO BYGONE DAYS LIFE MOVES ON BUT MEMORY STAYS”.
 |
| The Commonwealth War Grave of Sapper Alexander James Bussell, Royal Engineers. |
Some pleasing September evening skies over the Blackdown Hills just after sunset in South Somerset.
 |
| This photo was taken on the evening of the Autumnal Equinox. |
The village of West Lydford in Somerset is just a short step west of the A37 main road between Yeovil and Shepton Mallet. I parked in the village’s parish hall car park for a short break while on my way to explore the nearby village of Baltonsborough. In the centre of the car park is a charming and obviously lovingly maintained war memorial. Sadly, even though the adjacent church appears to be extremely well cared for, the memorial has been the target of vandals, but the damage is now made good and is barely noticeable.
 |
| The war memorial in the Somerset village of West Lydford. The Church of St. Peter is in the background. |
 |
| The war memorial in the Somerset Village of West Lydford, |
West Lydford’s Church of St.
Peter is picturesquely situated by the bank of the River Brue. I had a quick stroll around the churchyard
and its tranquil surroundings and took some photos of the church from the
seventeenth century bridge which crosses the Brue close by. The bridge has 5 arches and a parapet pierced
by 5 smaller arches, in case of flood.
St. Peter’s is of the Somerset Perpendicular type and its 8 pinnacles
are notable.
 |
| The seventeenth century bridge over the River Brue in the Somerset village of West Lydford. |
 |
| The Church of St. Peter in the Somerset village of West Lydford. |
It was a bright day with
persistent patchy cloud, but unfortunately the sun disappeared while I was
taking some of the photographs. I will
have to return on a day with a clearer sky!
The letters below appeared in The Week published on Sept 4 2021. Each show an interesting take on the lessons from history which have, or should that be haven’t, been learned from events in the graveyard of Empires.
Afghanistan: Lessons from
history.
To The Guardian
One can perhaps forgive
Americans for botching the Afghanistan campaign, but the British, who fought
the Afghans three times (1839, 1878 and 1919), should have known better.
When, before the first
Anglo-Afghan war of 1839, Lord Auckland, the head of the British invading
force, asked the Maharajah Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of Punjab, to undertake
the responsibility of invading Kabul, the Maharajah refused; he knew only too
well that they were easy to conquer, but difficult to rule; that they were a
mosaic of competing tribes, which ensured that no strong central authority
maintained its power over them for too long.
It is a pity that Western leaders could not foresee in 2001 what Ranjit
Singh could in 1839.
Randhir Singh Baines, London.
Obviously the Sikhs knew the
Afghans far, far better than the British, or anyone else for that matter.
To the Financial Times
The British Army’s retreat
from Kabul in 1842 was chaotic and ignominious, resulting in the deaths of
16,000 troops and support staff.
However, Britain still had a
plan: imperial expansion. This plan
meant the retreat was a minor sideshow.
Britain’s retreat from Kabul today is existentially significant because
Britain has no plan. Having been
abandoned by the US and having rejected the possibility of achieving national
fulfilment as leader of the EU, Britain, unlike in 1842, stands in
self-inflicted desolation.
Professor John Martin, University College London.
This letter arranges and
distorts facts in order to make a very thinly veiled attack on Brexit.
To The Times
You report that the air
evacuation from Kabul is the biggest since the Berlin blockade in
1948-49. It is more appropriate to
mention the airlift from Kabul in winter 1928-29, the first mass air evacuation
by the RAF, in which 586 British and foreign nationals were flown to Peshawar
to escape the take-over of Kabul by Bacha-i-Saqao, also known as Habibullah
Klalakani. The operation was
co-ordinated by the British legation in Kabul.
Operating in overladen, underpowered aircraft, then flying through the
North-West Frontier was no mean feat.
Politicians ought to do more historical research.
Geoff Cowling, British vice-consul, Kabul, 1970-73.
I thought the Berlin blockade of 1948-49 was a matter of supplies being flown in rather than people being flown out. Be that as it may, a remarkable effort by the RAF on both occasions.
I once attended an illuminating and interesting lecture by General Sir Michael Rose at Dillington House, near Ilminster, in South Somerset, and so I took especial note of the letter below. It was published in The Week on 27th August having first appeared in The Times.
Illusions of Victory
To The Times
To quote Kosovo as an example
of a substantial military success, as William Hague does in his article, is to
commit the same error as Tony Blair did.
Believing his own propaganda that Nato’s bombing campaign in Kosovo had
been successful, Blair led Britain into the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Yet the reality in Kosovo was very
different. At the end of 11 weeks of the
most intensive bombing by Nato since the War, the Serb army in Kosovo emerged
undefeated, and peace only came about when Boris Yeltsin withdrew his support
for the Milosevic regime. Furthermore,
it was the people of Serbia who removed Slobodan Milosevic from power in a
democratic election nearly 14 months later – not Nato as Hague implies. Surely the true lesson we can draw from the
crisis in Afghanistan is that if strategy is not based on reality, then
disaster will surely follow.
General Sir Michael Rose, former commander of the UN
forces in Bosnia.
I was pleased to see my letter to the Western Daily Press regarding the proposed road tunnel at Stonehenge was published on August 5. I reproduce it below.
Why not just move historic Stonehenge?
It appears the government’s plans for a road tunnel in the
vicinity of Stonehenge have been ruled unlawful.
Be that as it may, I am not convinced it is worth spending £1.6
billion, in order to cut 15 or 20 minutes off the journey times of those in
London and the South East who feel the need to hurtle through Wiltshire and
Somerset on their way to and from their holiday destinations in Devonshire and
Cornwall.
Furthermore, it does not seem fair to disappoint those travellers on the A303 who wish to catch a glimpse of
England's most historic monument.
However, as such eye-watering sums are involved in
the tunnel project, I cannot help wondering if it might be less expensive to
dig up Stonehenge and move it instead.
S. W.
Ilminster, Somerset.
The 1930 edition of The Automobile Association Handbook informs us that the population of Ilminster was then 2,367. This year South Somerset District Council has released plans which requires the town to have an additional 839 homes by the year 2036. A conservative estimate of 3 residents per home would see an increase in population of 2,517, which will be greater than the entire population of the town in 1930!
The following makes interesting reading.
Year Ilminster Population.
1930 2,367.
1981 3,722.
2001 4,573.
2011 5,808.
2021 ????? It will be interesting to see what that year's Census reveals?!
2036 Easily above 10,000 I suspect.
I forecast the population of this small market town will be 5 times bigger in 2030 than it was in 1930!!
Note. The figures for 1981,2001 and 2011 are taken from the Census.
Arthur Hopkins Tett, born on the 22 August 1882, was from Kingston, Ontario. A banker by profession he married Bessie Bruce Tett and they had one son, John Kearns Tett.
Arthur Tett served as a
Lieutenant with the 3rd Canadian Mounted Rifles during the Boer War
in South Africa.
He volunteered for service in
World War One and, again holding the rank of Lieutenant, embarked from Halifax
in Canada on 29 April 1917 and arrived in England on 7 May 1917 thereupon being
assigned to the 5th Canadian Reserve Battalion based at West
Sandling in Kent.
On 29 July Lieutenant Tett
was admitted to the Westcliff Canadian Eye and Ear Hospital in Folkestone with
a breathing problem caused by polypi in his left nostril, a condition which had
originally occurred in Ontario 2 years earlier.
The polypi were removed under local anaesthetic and having been given
the all clear he was subsequently discharged on the 18 August with 2 weeks
convalescent leave.
While on leave he was
admitted to Taunton Military Hospital where he died of Pneumococcal Meningitis
on 26 August 1917. He is at rest in the churchyard of St. John and All Saints
in the South Somerset village of Kingstone near Ilminster.
 |
| Lt. Arthur Hopkins Tett from Kingston, Ontario, Canada at rest in the churchyard of St. John and All Saints in the South Somerset village of Kingstone. |
John Tett re-joined the RCAF in 1952 with the rank of Wing Commander charged with establishing the development of fitness, sport and recreation within the service. After a successful career he left the RCAF in 1965 and became Director of Parks and Recreation for the principality of Kingston. Sadly, he drowned in August 1974 when his canoe overturned during a storm on Devil Lake in Frontenac Provincial Park north of Kingston.
 |
| The Church of St. John and All Saints in the South Somerset village of Kingstone. |
Also in the churchyard at Kingstone is a memorial stone commemorating Squadron Leader Sinclair ‘Tif’ O’Connor Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Force Cross, Air Force Medal, who served with RAF Bomber Command’s 49 Squadron during Operation Grapple – the testing of hydrogen bombs.
On 11 September 1958, while
holding the rank of Flight Lieutenant, he was pilot and captain of the Vickers
Valiant jet bomber (XD827) which dropped a hydrogen bomb on Christmas Island in
the Pacific during Operation Grapple Z.
The memorial stone records
Sinclair O’Connor’s birth on 26-5-1922 and death on 21-3-2013.
 |
| The memorial stone commemorating Sinclair O'Connor DFC, AFC, AFM in the churchyard of St. John and All Saints in the South Somerset village of Kingstone. |
On July 9 the weather was quite calm, not too hot, a bit cloudy, but with plenty of blue sky, so I decided on a walk with my camera up to the top of the 332 feet high Beacon Hill to the Beacon. I strolled up Dillington Park Drive on the eastern fringe of the ancient market town of Ilminster to the gate overlooking Dillington House. The house dates from the sixteenth century and was the home of Lord North, the Prime Minister who was in office when Britain “lost” America.
Turning left from the gate onto Beacon Hill, I followed the hedgerow north, west and then south until I came upon the Beacon at the junction of Old Road and the footpath which takes you west to New Road, the B3168, the road from Ilminster to Curry Rivel. Old Road is now just a track, very narrow and rutted in places on the southern side of the hill, but was once the route north from Ilminster.
The fields immediately around the Beacon are all planted with maize this year – at the moment the crop is about thigh high.
 |
| Maize growing on Beacon Hill near Ilminster, South Somerset. |
 |
| The Beacon on Beacon Hill near Ilminster, South Somerset. |
 |
| Overgrown Old Road leading south from the Beacon into Ilminster. |
 |
| Old Road leading north at the Beacon on Beacon Hill near Ilminster in South Somerset |
 |
| The footpath leading west from the Beacon to New Road/B3168 in Ilminster. South Somerset. |
I continued along the footpath toward New Road until I came to a bench which has fine views looking down on Ilminster and its Church of St. Mary. Gazing over the town to the south one can see Herne Hill and Pretwood Hill, while Windwhistle Ridge is on the skyline to the south east.
 |
| Looking down on Ilminster in South Somerset from Beacon Hill. |
 |
| The view south east from Beacon Hill above Ilminster in South Somerset looking across the Shudrick Valley toward Windwhistle Ridge on the skyline. |
After taking a rest and enjoying the view I retraced my steps. Just north of the Beacon I could see all the way to the Mendips and the transmitter on Pen Hill. I could also easily see the tower of St. Andrew’s Church at Curry Rivel.
 |
| The view toward The Mendips from Beacon Hill near Ilminster in South Somerset. The transmitter on Pen Hill is visible on the skyline to the right. |
Stoke St. Gregory, like its
neighbouring village of North Curry, straggles along a low ridge which rises
from the Somerset Levels and runs south-west to north-east with West Sedge Moor
to one side and Curry Moor and Stan Moor on the other.
The Somerset Village Book, Somerset Federation Of Women’s Institutes (Countryside
Books, 1988) has this to say of the village:
“The village, one of the largest in Somerset, covers
an area of 3,967 acres and took its name from the church dedicated to St.
Gregory the Great.
It is situated on the Somerset Levels, which for
centuries has been the centre of withy growing and basket making. The willow tree flourishes naturally on the
wetlands of Somerset and it was discovered that the young straight shoots could
be twisted, plaited and woven into many useful articles.
Present day Stoke St. Gregory is a study in contrasts
– the rattle of the tractors – the rumble of the occasional bus and also the
piercing shriek of a jet plane passing overhead.”
In 1988 the jet planes were
almost certainly Fleet Air Arm Sea Harriers from RNAS Yeovilton, but sadly, in
a short sighted move by the Labour government, they were retired from service
in 2006. However, we may hear the sound
of jets over Somerset again in the not too distant future as the F35B Lightning
is to enter service with the Fleet Air Arm – it is already at sea with an RAF
squadron operating from the carrier HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH.
As Wimbledon is upon us again,
at this time of year I thought I would wend my way along the narrow undulating
road to the village and pay my respects at the grave of the noted tennis player
“Bunny” Austin. He is at rest in the
churchyard at the parish church of St. Gregory.
Henry Wilfred “Bunny” Austin
was the last British man to reach the final of a Grand Slam tournament until
Andy Murray in 2012.
In the years 1933-1936 he
helped Fred Perry win the Davis Cup for Britain. In 1938 he reached the final at Wimbledon
only to be soundly beaten by the American Don Budge, one of the finest players
of the era. Budge was the son of a
Scottish immigrant to the USA named John “Jack” Budge who had played several
times in Rangers reserve team before emigrating.
In 1939 Austin was made top
seed at Wimbledon, but was eliminated early in the competition – it was his
last appearance on court there.
Bunny Austin married English
actress Phyllis Konstam in 1931. They met
on a trans-Atlantic liner in 1929 when Austin was travelling to play in the US
Open.
The grave of Bunny Austin and his wife Phyllis in the churchyard of the parish church of St. Gregory in the Somerset village of Stoke St. Gregory.
Arthur Mee, when writing of
Stoke St Gregory, beautifully describes its parish church in his The King’s England – Somerset (Hodder
and Stoughton Ltd., 1968).
“It has a noble church, with a handsome pierced
parapet, glorious windows, and a central octagonal tower built in the
thirteenth century fashion before such towers were ousted by the stately towers of 200 years later, for
which Somerset is renowned throughout the land.
The tower has eight sides cunningly fitted on four arches, with smaller
arches joining the corners. Niches and
statues are everywhere – nineteenth century apostles round the tower, a
mediaeval St. Gregory in the south porch with a dove in his hands, and the
statues round the pulpit. We have seen
pulpits like this at Thurloxton and North Newton, but nowhere else in
Somerset.”
The parish church of St. Gregory in the Somerset village of Stoke St. Gregory. 
The octagonal tower of St. Gregory's with its apostles in the Somerset village of Stoke St. Gregory. 
The tower and clock of the parish church of St. Gregory in the village of Stoke St. Gregory.
