Category: WWI, WWII & War Memorial

Gareth Fitzalan Howard Drayson is the second name on the list of WW2 dead on Lustleigh War Memorial. He was killed at Arnhem and lies buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission War Cemetery at Oosterbeek, just west of Arnhem in the Netherlands. Some parishioners may remember his sister, Vivian, known more usually as ‘Pope’, who died in 2001.

In the early years of the war the family home was Thorne, since renamed Robin Hill, on Knowle Road. Garry studied medicine at Edinburgh University and was commissioned in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a Lieutenant in March 1941, being promoted to Captain one year later. Volunteering for service as a parachutist, he won the coveted maroon beret and in due course posted as the Regimental Medical Officer to 10^th (Sussex) Battalion, the Parachute Regiment where it seems he was nick-named Gremlin. 

On 18^th September 1944, his battalion joined Operation Market Garden, the biggest airborne operation of the Second World War, the aim of which was to capture a series of bridges over the Lower Rhine and facilitate the advance of ground forces across the river and into Germany.

Unfortunately for Garry, the area where he was deployed met fierce resistance from the enemy and more than once they were forced back, all the time with Captain Drayson close to the front line providing first-aid to the wounded. But the day after landing in Holland, he lost his own life, one of 92 killed out of 582 men of 10 Para who set out on the mission.

Chris Wilson

On Friday 19^th September, Lustleigh Bell Ringers will sound a half-muffled peel in his honour.

A more detailed biography can be found in the Lustleigh Society’s new book “Home Front to Front Line” along with chapters detailing various other aspects of village life during WW2.

Wing Commander R.C. Hancock was the pilot of a Percival Proctor which crashed and burned out on take-off at Roborough airfield, Plymouth, at 5.30pm on the evening of Monday, 9^th June 1941. Suffering multiple injuries, he died of wounds in the Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth the following day.

Christened ‘Richard Claude’ but always known as ‘Dick’, he was the unmarried brother of sisters, Iris and Beryl, married to Arthur and Jack Gould of Lower Hisley and Long Close respectively. The family remember Dick as something of a dare-devil; one anecdote recalls how, ‘to prove himself’, he flew under Clifton suspension bridge.

Born in Warwickshire and educated at Blundell’s School, Tiverton, he became an RAF cadet but, it appears, gained his pilot’s licence privately before emigrating and joining the Royal New Zealand Territorial Air Force. A few years’ later, he was back in England and back with the RAF.

In 1940 he was elevated to Wing Commander and posted to command No. 16 Squadron, primarily stationed at Weston Zoyland, just east of Bridgwater, but with several detachments scattered among airfields including Okehampton, Roborough, St Just and Bolt Head in the West Country and Tilshead on Salisbury Plain. It was during his ‘commute’ between these units that Dick suffered his fatal accident. His funeral took place at Lustleigh and he was laid to rest in the extension churchyard.

On Tuesday 10^th June, Lustleigh Bell Ringers will sound a half-muffled peel in his honour.

A more detailed biography will be included in a book to be published by the Lustleigh Society later this year recounting various aspect of the village during WW2.

The Battle of the River Plate, which took place in the South Atlantic in 1939, was the first naval battle of the Second World War. During its engagement with the Graf Spee, the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter suffered severe damage; luckily, Reginald James Laxton escaped unscathed. Fortune, however, did not shine on his younger brother.

Brian Eric Prentice Laxton enlisted in Devonport on 26^th July 1937. After spells of training and serving on different ships, he joined HMS Jaguar a week after our country had declared war on Germany. The following year, his ship was assisting in the Dunkirk evacuation. During the operation, she was attacked by German dive-bombers and, after several near misses, one bomb exploded close to the port side, killing 12 and wounding 30 men. On arrival back in Dover, Brian was taken to Shorncliffe Military Hospital in Kent, but his wounds were too severe and he died the following day.

His body was returned to Lustleigh for a funeral during which his coffin was draped in the Union Jack and the whole village turned out to show its sympathy.

On Friday 30^th May, Lustleigh Bell Ringers will sound a half-muffled peel in his honour.

A more detailed biography will be included in a book to be published by the Lustleigh Society later this year recounting various aspect of the village during WW2.

Frank Horrell was a Lustleigh man through and through. Having lost his mother shortly before his second birthday, he was brought up by his aunt, Sarah Squires, of Rock Villa, and threw himself into all manner of village life. As a teenager, he attended the funeral of his friend, Brian Laxton, another WW2 casualty, before himself signing up and joining the Royal Corps of Signals.

In early 1942, he found himself part of the Allied troops trying to secure Java and prevent it falling into the hands of the Japanese. It was a futile attempt and in just over a month after his arrival, the Allies forces had laid down their arms in surrender.

Frank became a POW and was transported to Borneo. Following news that he was missing, it would have been a relief to his family when they were told he was in captivity; unbeknown to them was the sheer brutality that the Japanese inflicted upon their prisoners. Precisely what treatment befell Frank is unknown, but in 1945 he contracted Malaria and died four weeks later. His grave is to be found at the Lebuan War Cemetery on a small island in Brunei Bay, off the coast of north-west Borneo.

On Sunday 30^th March, Lustleigh Bell Ringers will sound a half-muffled peel in his honour.

A more detailed biography will be included in a book to be published by the Lustleigh Society later this year recounting various aspect of the village during WW2.

With a father achieving high rank in the army and an elder brother in the Royal Navy, a life in the armed services was in the blood of Edward Wollaston Kitson. His own naval career began in 1903 and he served aboard many ships during World War 1 in waters around Australia and New Zealand, as part of the Dover Monitor Squadron challenging German shore artillery in occupied Belgium and on convoy escort duties.

During the inter-war years, he served in various parts of the world but retired in 1934, but only after moving to Lustleigh a few years earlier. Although he came out of retirement before the outbreak of WW2, as tensions were building in Europe, it is believed that he was initially given a land-based role and spent the next couple of years campaigning to get back to sea which he achieved in 1941.

At the end of 1943, poor health saw Edward transferred from ship to shore. He was admitted to Horton Hospital in Epsom and died there from illness on 18^th February 1944, aged 55. The character of the man was echoed in an obituary in The Times which said that “Edward was a man who attracted affection and respect from his superiors, contemporaries and subordinates; his quiet and unselfish efficiency commanded respect, and his sincerity, innate goodness, and sense of humour affection from all hands.”

On Tuesday 18^th February 2025, the Lustleigh Bell Ringers will sound a half-muffled peel in his honour.

The Parish Magazine of February 1944 reported “The sympathy of the whole village goes out to Mrs McLeroth in the death of her son Hope – not in battle, but on active service. A very promising career in the Navy has been cut short, but he had already done some years of service at sea – 3 years in the “Revenge”. He came home recently and only a few days before his death he joined the “Glasgow” for a course. During an exercise at sea, he fell from a height and received serious head injuries, from which he died next day in hospital. He was buried with full Naval honours in Plymouth Cemetery, and will be remembered with Brian Laxton and Ernest Squires, who also gave their lives at sea.

Hope was one of twins. While his brother Peter entered the Merchant Navy, Hope signed up with the Royal Navy aged just 15. Early in the war, he was transporting some of Britain’s gold reserves to Canada. Later, he took Poland’s Prime Minister in exile across the Atlantic for talks with President Roosevelt.

In January 1944, he visited his mother at Wrey Villa, possibly for the first time since the passing of his father some 20 months earlier; maybe also the first time since his mother had moved to the village from North London. He departed for Devonport on 20^th January 1944 with tragedy striking the very next day.

On Wednesday 22^nd January 2025, the Lustleigh Bell Ringers will sound a half-muffled peel in his honour.

Chris Wilson

It was raw emotion that compelled Albert Edward Arnold to volunteer his services during WW1. At 45 years of age, he certainly wasn’t the typical recruit, but having just received news of the death of his son, the red in his eyes gave him little choice. With anger pulsing through his veins, he stomped to the recruitment office in Stratford, East London, determined to give the Boche a bloody nose. That opportunity, however, was not to come his way.

Albert’s story begins and ends largely in the West Country. He was born on 17^th April 1870 in Wear Gifford where his father was a police constable; he was the fifth of nine siblings, all but one of them boys. His father’s job took the family around the county from Dawlish to Appledore and from Buckland Brewer back to Wear Gifford. By 1879, the family arrived in Lustleigh planting roots that would stretch forward one hundred years.

Upon their arrival, five of the children, including Albert, were registered at Lustleigh Board School. Where they lived initially is unclear, although by 1891, following the death three years earlier of father John, the family were occupying Stable House with a practically unified effort to put bread on the table: mother Mary Ann had become a midwife, sister Lucy was a parlour maid, one brother, Edwin, was a Tram Conductor while another, Ernest, was a page – even 11-year old Charles had become an errand boy, perhaps for the neighbouring post office and general store.

Albert, however, had already left home at this point. He clearly had wider horizons and entered the merchant navy and, while his siblings were turning their hands to all manner of trades to support the family, this wanderlust 21-year old had just sailed back from Barbados and was recovering from a sailor’s complaint in the Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital in Greenwich. Following his discharge after 73 days, he resumed his seafaring days based in Southampton where he lodged with his future wife and her widowed mother.

Following his marriage to Rose French in 1893, Albert traded in his life at sea for land-based work, becoming a foreman at an iron works in Southampton, and having five children in that city before moving to London’s dockland at Silvertown (although technically in Essex at that time). There, he found work at an oil wharf and went on to have another three children.

One of his sons, also named Albert Edward Arnold, found work at the same oil wharf which, presumably, caused at least some confusion – perhaps even some jollity – among their co-workers; although, with father as a labourer and son as a fitter’s boy, maybe they escaped constant jibing. Any joking, though, stopped with the outbreak of war and the signing up of Albert junior into the Royal Engineers; sadly, his fighting days were cut short when he died of wounds on 9^th March 1915.

Despite having a wife and six children at home, the loss of his son and namesake was too much to bear. Perhaps he wrestled with his conscience for a short while, but the following month, on 24^th April, he signed up for action. Revenge, though, was not going to come easy as he was deemed too old for front line action and assigned to the 4^th Devons: engaged, according to Revd. Johnson’s roll call of all parishioners who served in the Great War, as a “bomb instructor”; the regimental museum, however, believes the likely munitions involved were hand grenades. This is a moot point, though, as the salient fact is that one of these weapons was accidentally dropped by a recruit killing and wounding several, including Albert severely. The date of the incident is unrecorded, but he was discharged from the army on 13^th February 1918 and awarded a Silver War Badge.

It is probable that he returned home to London to be with his wife and children which now included a two-year old boy who had arrived during his war service. A year after the repatriation with his family, his wife died; not long after, his health gave way to the wounds sustained in the training incident and he was admitted to Whipps Cross Hospital, where he died on 3^rd November 1920.

While his son is commemorated on the Silverton War Memorial, it is in Lustleigh where we find Albert senior’s name inscribed in memory of his war service. This was clearly due to that part of his family which remained in our village, living at Stable House. His mother died there in 1917, but his brother, Edwin, continued in that residence serving the parish, at various times, as overseer of the poor, water bailiff, clerk to the parish council and school manager.

After the war, some of his nephews and nieces (Albert’s children) would often come to stay, including the eldest, Rose, and the youngest, Alfred. When Edwin passed away in 1946, two nieces took up permanent residence at Stable House; Rose Gladys Arnold, Albert’s first-born, died there in 1978 ending the family’s connection with the house. Their connection with the village, though, lives on through the war memorial.

Albert Edward Arnold will be remembered on Tuesday 3^rd November 2020, when the Bell Ringers will sound a half-muffled peel in his honour; regrettably, this will be a reduced peel, using only three bells, due to Covid restrictions.

Chris Wilson

This story draws on various other sources including.

• Keep Military Museum
• Ancestry, Rootsweb & FindMyPast
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• Facebook

In July 1918, Lustleigh Parish Magazine reported that four men were prisoners of war, three of them barely more than boys who had been captured within days of their arrival in France. “Could not Lustleigh, as a parish, do something to relieve the hardship of our friends in their captivity”, pleaded Revd. Herbert Johnson, although precisely what he had in mind is difficult to fathom. Two of the four survived the war, the other two died in captivity including Frank Lake.

Frank was considerably older than the other three men, having been born in 1884 in Cheriton Bishop. He was the only son, among ten children, of Jeremiah and Ellen Lake, both of whom hailed from agricultural stock, although Jeremiah took a break from the soil for a few years around 1890 to run the New Inn at Cheriton Cross.

Frank, himself, was not averse to turning his hand to different professions. In 1901, he was working in a bakehouse in Cheriton Bishop, while at the time of his first marriage to Ethel Maunder, he was living in Newton St. Cyres working as a groom, only to change again a few years later to become a gardener.

At the time of their wedding, on 9^th July 1910, Ethel was working alongside her mother, at the Confectionery & Lozenge Works located just behind East Street in Crediton, where they were living cheek by jowl with many of their co-workers. The factory was that of Ernest Jackson & Co Ltd which produced a range of medicinal sweets, pastilles and lozenges and was first founded to develop ‘something effective but soothing for a troublesome sore throat’. Sadly, Ethel died little more than half way through their first year of marriage.

Frank was working, at this point, as a stableman groom in Newton St Cyres. Precisely where is unknown, but a few years later, he was earning his living as a gardener at the prestigious Newton House, home to Lady Audrey Buller, widow of General Sir Redvers Buller, the decorated British Army officer.

Newton House was once the seat of the Quicke family, founders of the eponymous cheese brand. While they relinquished Newton House in favour of Sherwood House, the Quickes continued as Lords of the Manor and would occasionally hold tea parties for their tenants. At these events, it was not unheard of for Lady Buller to offer the services of Frank Lake to decorate the room with evergreens and flowers.

Frank remarried in 1914 to Eva Lowton, a milliner from the St. Thomas district of Exeter. This time it was war that interrupted his marriage and in September 1915, he enlisted in the Army Service Corps at Aldershot. The following year, he was mobilised to France and was transferred, first to 11^th Battalion (Finsbury Rifles) London Regiment and later to 1^st Battalion of the 20^th London Regiment (Blackheath and Woolwich).

Little has been found about his movements in France until we reach March 1918, a peaceful time being had at the beginning of the month spent in rest and reorganisation with the odd gymkhana and boxing match thrown in for entertainment. Then came a massive assault on the allies known as the German Spring Offensive.

Opposition forces had just been boosted by Russia’s withdrawal from the war, giving the Germans the ability to redeploy some 500,000 troops to the Western Front: this was their chance, they felt, to push for victory; they were particularly keen to do so before American troops arrived on the scene in significant numbers.

On 21^st March, the German’s launched a massive offensive against the British Fifth Army and the right wing of the British Third Army, the gap between the two being covered by the 47^th Division of which Frank’s regiment was part. The assault began with a heavy bombardment of high explosives and gas shells, the Germans later using the ensuing smoke screen to launch its large-scale attack. The operation saw the deepest advances made by either side since 1914 and at the end of the first day, British casualties amounted to over 7,500 dead and 10,000 wounded, and by the following day the Fifth Army was in full retreat.

More significantly, in this story, is that by the end of the first day, 21,000 British soldiers had been taken prisoner. Whether, Frank was one of the first wave of our men to be captured, or whether it happened over the following few days, is of little consequence; what does matter is that he fell into enemy hands. Frank had been wounded in the leg and how badly he was treated or how poorly his injury was attended to is not known, but it is well documented that the German captors had little respect for their prisoners. “The likelihood of dying in a camp during the First World War was higher than the likelihood of dying in battle”, wrote John Lewis-Stempel in “The War Behind the Wire: The Life, Death and Glory of British Prisoners of War 1914-1918.

Frank Lake died in captivity, in the Alexandrinenstrasse Lazaret, a special military hospital for POWs in Berlin, on 9^th September 1918. Revd. Johnson noted that he died from his wounds although one of his POW index cards says that death was the result of exhaustion: perhaps both are true. The precise cause may be unknown, but his resting place is: he is buried in Berlin South-Western Cemetery alongside 1,175 other fallen comrades.

“There is a special pathos attaching to those who, like him, have been called away just at the end, when the fighting had almost ceased, and the Victory almost ours” wrote Revd. Johnson in the parish magazine in December 1918. Interestingly, Frank never lived in Lustleigh, so it is the residency of his parents at Brookfield before and during the war that earnt him a place on the war memorials of both Lustleigh and Bovey Tracey.

Frank Lake will be remembered on Sunday 9^th September when the Bell Ringers will sound a half-muffled peel in his honour.

Chris Wilson

Sources used include:

• Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• Ancestry & FindMyPast
• “Smitten Down yet Not Destroyed”, Bovey’s WW1 book
• Lustleigh Parish Magazine
• historylearningsite.co.uk
• telegraph.co.uk
• Wikipedia