Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2008 | Page 52

life

THE ISLAND AT WAR 1939 - 1945

Photo: Derek Kents release certificate form the Civil Defence Motor
Cycle Messenger Service

Another tragedy occurred
when Patrol Officer Frank
Andrew Day fell into
Somerton Reservoir at Cowes
and drowned. He was being
instructed in the use of a
trailer pump with the Auxiliary
Fire Service and his name is
in the Commonwealth War
Graves Commission’s Debt of
Honour Register together with
the other National Fire Service
victims.
Also in the register is James
Frederick Whapshott, a 35
year-old warden who was on
duty when two HE bombs
exploded in a raid at Cowes
on 27 May 1941 disturbing
a number of the graves in
Northwood cemetery. James
who was close by, contracted

52

a very unusual disease called
pneumococcal menigitis and
died later.
Others killed in incidents
on the Island and included on
the register are Alice Frances
Hann, a member of the W.V.S.
who died in the second raid on
Cowes on 4 May 1942 while
providing refreshments from
a mobile canteen at Samuel
White's yard. And two ARP
wardens, Montague Barnard
Brook Brinton and William
Marchant Cowburn, lost their
lives on 24 April 1941 at East
Cowes when they rushed into
a bombed building to rescue
the occupants trapped in the
debris and fell 30 feet into a
deep cavity made by the high
explosive bomb. All these

names are on a memorial
outside St. James’ church in
East Cowes.
Roy Brinton remembers
walking into East Cowes after
one of the raids “There was
a big crater by the Prince
of Wales pub and an awful
stench,” Roy says. “Another
time rescuers heard children
crying under the rubble and
as my father was the smallest
warden there, he was sent
down into the crater to search
for survivors.”
Molly Gustar was in the
British Red Cross before
she joined the emergency
ambulance section of the Civil
Defence. She was based at a
depot in the town hall at East
Cowes and taught to drive
an ambulance, a converted
delivery van fitted with four
iron stretchers, by an army
instructor. Molly was on duty
during a particularly bad raid
when Cowes was being targeted
by German bombers aiming
for the shipyards and the
Saunders Roe aircraft factory.
Driving to the Frank James
hospital she found it was full
of casualties so she drove her
ambulance to Osborne House,
a convalescent home for
officers. Molly says, “Surgeon
Rear-Admiral B. Pickering
Pick said that the wounded
couldn’t be accommodated
there so I told him he was
going to take them.” Molly
added that the damage to
Cowes would have been a lot
worse but for the crew of the
Polish ship, ‘ORP Blyskawica’,
who manned the guns during
the raid. The ship was in for
repair at John Samuel White’s
shipyard where it had been
built.
Records show that during
the war, 2,379 civil defence
workers were killed and
4,459 were seriously injured
in Britain (in 1943 the
government announced that a

grant of up to £7.10s towards
the cost of a private funeral of
any Civil Defence volunteers
killed in the line of duty).
By 1942 the Germans
had introduced a new
‘Hit-and-Run’ bombing tactic
and it was on one of these
raids that three lighthouse
keepers were killed at St.
Catherine’s lighthouse at Niton
on 1 June 1943. As the ban on
ringing church bells had been
lifted, the sad tolling of the
knell was rung for their funeral
at the parish church, the first
time the bells had rung since
the outbreak of war. Their
names also appear in the Debt
of Honour Register.
In 1940 a tragic incident took
place when four Trinity House
men from Cowes were drowned
while delivering stores to the
Eddystone lighthouse off
Plymouth and a little over two
months later, another Cowes
man, William John Long,
master of the Owers Lightship,
lost his life when a motor
launch taking him out to the
Trinity House vessel, Satellite,
was swamped and capsized
near the breakwater in the
mouth of Cowes harbour.
It was in 1940 that Irene Ball
saw an advertisement in the
Isle of Wight Times for police
women recruits. Her father
and her fiancé said, “Ring
them up”, so aged nineteen,
Irene joined the Women’s
Auxiliary Police Corps and
went first to the police station
at Hillside in Newport and
later to Quay Street where she
worked on the switchboard.
Calverts Hotel was next to the
police station and supplied the
prisoners’ meals. “There was
one woman,” Irene remembers.
“who persisted in breaking
windows at Hunnyhill in order
to get a meal and a bed for the
night and a chance to wash her
bloomers.”
As the Island was a restricted

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