How fortunate it was that Remembrance Day brought dry and sunny weather. Our usual brief service was held at the War Memorial, prior to a United Service in the Parish Church. I doubt if anyone has even noticed, in recent years anyway, the anomalies between the record listed in the Church and those who died in, or as the result of, the First World War and the names of the Fallen read from the War Memorial on the Square each year. On the Church "Roll of Honour", bearing sixteen names, one is that of Lieut. Richard Skynner. His name is not on the War Memorial, but there is a tablet to his memory on a wall in Welcombe Church. His father had a house in Bradworthy as well as in Welcombe. Lieut. Skynner was drowned when he was on a ship taking Lord Kitchener to Russia and was torpedoed. Again the name of Richard Jennings, who died of war wounds at the age of 24 in 1922 is recorded on the War Memorial, but not in the Church. Richard Jennings is buried in Bradworthy Free Church cemetery in an unmarked grave. I contacted the Commonwealth War Graves Commission with a view to getting one of their standard memorial stones erected. Unfortunately Richard Jennings died a few months later than the date the Commission ceased to take responsibility for providing these memorials.
At long last those who suffered as prisoners of the Japanese are to receive some compensation, too late for many who have died, including the Bradworthy resident who was a prisoner of the Japanese. Mr Edgar George Plummer, of the Royal Engineers was captured in Singapore and worked on railways and roads in Thailand. He suffered severely from the sadistic treatment he received and tropical disease. Mr. Plummer died in July 1993 and was buried with full military honours in Bradworthy Churchyard.
The death has recently taken place suddenly of Squadron Leader Raymond Lewis, of Quedegeley, Gloucestershire. A native of Putford he was the younger son of the late Mr. and Mrs. James Lewis. He gained a BSc in Physics at London University and was commissioned into the Engineering branch of the Royal Air Force in 1970, after passing out at the RAF College Cranwell. Retiring from the Air Force in 1986 he went into business in connection with aircraft simulators. He was a director of Messrs. Pennants (Staverton, Gloucs) and his work frequently involved travel and business negotiations abroad. Mr. Lewis was 58 and leaves a widow, a son and a daughter.
I was interested to see that the late Emperor of Abyssinia was at last being laid in the family vault at Addis Ababa. Due to Mussolini's aggression in that part of Africa, Haile Selassie left his country and was granted asylum in England in 1938. I wonder how many remember him coming to this area and attending a fete at Hartland Abbey. I went to this Abbey and like several other people was able to get his autograph. Collecting the signatures of famous people was quite a craze at that time. I may have been seeking some material for a write up and I recall being on the platform with the dethroned monarch and holding his walking stick whilst he signed autographs. Physically he was a small man. World War II came and in a few years on duties with the RAF I was visiting Eritrea, which had been separated and occupied by the Italians before their defeat by the British. We had an airport there high in the mountains. Eritrea was returned to Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia), but I believe has again become a self governing state.
William George Steadwell, another Toronto man (there must be many people in that city whose ancestral roots are in this area) has written to learn something about the Jennings family. His great-grandmother was Elizabeth Grace Steadwell, later married name Jennings. I realised that I knew her when I was a boy. He was interested in a great-aunt, vaguely known to him as Flossie, a nurse. I was able to tell him that Flossie, a Red Cross nurse in the 1914-18 War married William Charles Stanley in Canada and when she died at the age of 34 (partly as a result of her war service) in 1925 she was buried with military honours in a cemetery in Regina, Saskatchewan. I could confirm this as I saw her grave when I visited her grave in 1984. Flossie was one of two nurses from Bradworthy who were in World War I. The other was Louise Kay (later Mrs. Matthew Coles), who continued to live in Bradworthy and died in February 1966.