Brief biographies of the men named on the World War 2 panels on Trumpington War Memorial. There are additional pages with information about World War 2 and the War Memorial.
Stanley G. Ash
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Stanley G. Ash
Steward Ash, Stanley G., Service Number P/SR56933, Died 05/05/1941, Aged 22, H.M.S. La Malouine, Royal Navy, Son of Florence Hatch, of [166 Shelford Road,] Trumpington, Cambridge. Buried at Belfast City Cemetery, Glenalina Extn. Sec. B.S. Grave 2., Headstone Inscription “Your memory will always live in our hearts. Mother and his two sisters Ann and Elsie”.
In 1941, H.M.S. La Malouine, a Flower-class corvette, was a member of the 2nd Escort Group operating from Northern Ireland. On the night of 4th/5th May 1941 the ship was damaged by a near-miss bomb during a Luftwaffe air raid on Belfast and two members of the crew were killed, Ordinary Seaman James Taylor, aged 23, of Newfoundland, and Steward Stanley G. Ash, aged 22, of Trumpington.
Source: The Second World War in Northern Ireland.
Arthur Edward Carter
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Arthur Edward Carter
Private Carter, Arthur Edward, Service Number 5931752, Died 05/07/1943, Aged 36, 1st Bn. Cambridgeshire Regiment. Buried at Chungkai War Cemetery, Thailand, 4. K. 6.
Private A.E. Carter had been ‘missing’ for over a year before his parents received a postcard on 14 July 1943 telling them that he was ‘well and safe’ – a prisoner of war in the Far East. Two months later, in September 1943, they received notification that their son had died of malaria on 5 July.
Jack Rupert Carter
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Jack Rupert Carter
Private Carter, Jack Rupert, Service Number 1950028, Died 31/03/1945, Aged 25 Army Catering Corps attd. Royal Artillery, Son of Mr. and Mrs. Rupert Carter; husband of Joyce Mary Carter, of Mynachty, Cardiff. Buried at Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, Germany, 60. C. 11.
Jack Rupert Carter was the younger brother of Arthur Edward Carter. He had married Joyce Mary Nethercott in Cambridge in late 1943.
Jack Neville Creek
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Jack Neville Creek
Lieutenant Creek, Jack Neville, Service Number 169684, Died 26/12/1940, Aged 38, 1st Bn. Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Son of Charles David and Ellen Elizabeth Creek; husband of Fannie Monica Creek, of [Allendale, 2 Bishop’s Road,] Trumpington, Cambridge. Buried at Halfaya Sollum War Cemetery, Egypt, 8. D. 8., Headstone Inscription “His heart for his home, his life for his country, his soul for God”.
‘Forgotten’ soldier honoured at last.
A forgotten soldier is set to be commemorated on a Cambridge war memorial for the first time – 74 years after he was killed. Lt. Jack Creek, of Bishop’s Road, Trumpington, died in action in Egypt in 1940 but his name was not added to the village’s memorial at the end of the Second World War, apparently because his widow and the couple’s three young sons had moved away from the city… Lt Creek was 38 when he was killed in a bombing raid on Boxing Day in 1940. Born in George IV Street, Cambridge, he was a professional soldier in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who worked his way up through the ranks and saw service in Jamaica, China and India…
Source: Cambridge News, 21 July 2014, p. 8.
Brian Thomas Farrington
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Brian Thomas Farrington
Private Farrington, Brian Thomas, Service Number 14679540, Died 13/08/1944 Aged 19, 1st Bn. Suffolk Regiment, Son of Thomas and Laura Olive Farrington, of [24 Alpha Terrace,] Trumpington, Cambridge. Buried at St. Charles De Percy War Cemetery, France, VIII. A. 12., Headstone Inscription “Treasured memories of our dearly loved son”.
The 1st Battalion Suffolk Regiment, serving as part of the 3rd Infantry Division of 8th Infantry Brigade, landed on Sword Beach on D-Day, 6 June 1944. On 13 August, the Battalion was advancing through France along the Vire-Tinchebray road, and this period is referred to as the Tinchebray Battle. Casualties mounted throughout the day due to heavy mortaring and shellfire. Twenty three soldiers, other ranks, of the 1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, were listed on Casualty List No. 1544 as killed in action on 12-13 August 1944.
Sources:
‘1 Suffolk in Normandy’ by Colonel Eric Lummis and additional contributions, serialized at https://www.arrse. co.uk/community/threads/d-day-with-the-1st-suffolks-unpublished-version.115690/page-4;
‘The Suffolk Regiment, 1928 to 1926’ by Walter Norris Nicholson, Ipswich: East Anglian Magazine, [1948];
FindMyPast. Expeditionary Forces. North West Europe, Casualty List No. 1544, p. 9: https://search.findmypast.co.uk/record?id=GBM%2FWO417%2F081% 2F0206&parentid=GBM%2FWO417%2F0790906
Stanley Harold Goodwin
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Stanley Harold Goodwin
Serjeant Goodwin, Stanley Harold, Service Number 2079363, Died 07/09/1945, Aged 24, Royal Engineers attd. Force 136 Special Operations Executive, Son of Laurie and Elsie Goodwin; husband of Hilary Mary Goodwin, of Trumpington, Cambridgeshire. Commemorated at Rangoon Memorial, Taukkyan War Cemetery, Myanmar, Spec. Mem. 5.
Missing on Air Operations
Our picture is of Sergt. Stanley H. Goodwin, Royal Engineers, aged 24, husband of Mrs Hilary Goodwin, of Portersfield Road, Norwich, and only son of Mrs E. Goodwin, 30 Alpha Terrace, Trumpington. Sergt. Goodwin was reported missing on September 7th, 1945, while travelling in an aircraft on a special operation in South-East Asia Command. He was embodied at the outbreak of war with the Territorial Army, and served in the 287th Field Company, R.E. He left the Company just before they went to Singapore, and went to India for special work in Calcutta in August, 1944. Before the war he was R.D.C.
Source: Independent Press and Chronicle, Friday 14 December 1945, p. 7.
Stanley Harold Goodwin – the Missing Aircraft and its Crew
7.9.1945 Dakota IV serial KN584 357 Squadron Burma
Stanley Harold Goodwin, Royal Engineers, was named as one of the sixteen men on board Dakota KN584.
Plane missing from Special Duties mission over Burma – missing on a day sortie. On the way to Taungoo and Calcutta, Dakota KN584 was due to make an airdrop at Mewaing, where the Special Operations Executive had been training and supplying ethnic Kayin troops to stage guerrilla attacks on the Japanese lines. But shortly after take-off from Rangoon, the plane hit bad weather and was unable to find the drop site. It eventually crashed into the nearby hills. The plane had 4 crew and 12 members of the Army and R.A.F. It had hit the side of a mountain 6000 ft above sea level and 10 miles from the drop zone.
Source: The moonlight war: the story of clandestine operations in Southeast Asia, 1944-1945’ by S/Leader Terence O’Brien, London: Collins, 1987, p. 342-346.
The plane was identified by its tail unit and personal belongings of a crew member. Some months later a team led by Captain Bourne visited the area and, together with locals, recovered what they could of the remains and buried them in the compound of Mewaing’s monastery. A wooden cross was placed at the grave site and two pieces of paper with the names of the lost members on the plane were nailed to the cross. A photograph of this wooden cross was supplied by the War Graves Commission to a nephew of one of the lost crew.
In 2016 “the remains of Harry Smith and 15 others who died when Dakota KN 584 crashed on September 7, 1945, are still buried in a monastery compound in Mewaing, a remote village on the road from Bilin in Mon State to Papun, Kayin State. Decades of fighting between the Karen National Union and the Tatmadaw – often described as one of the world’s longest-running conflicts – have so far rendered that long-promised repatriation impossible.
But for the relatives of the deceased, a closure of sorts finally arrived on November 13. As the diplomats, military attachés and schoolchildren filtered out of Yangon’s Taukkyan War Cemetery at the end of the Remembrance Day service that morning, a small group remained behind for a much more personal memorial.
In the front right corner of the cemetery, a Commonwealth War Graves Commission banner obscured a stone block and 16 pedestals with bronze plaques commemorating those who died in the September 1945 crash. With short speeches concluded and the banner removed, relatives of four of the deceased who had travelled to Yangon for the ceremony began laying wreaths.” Although the question of the memorial at Taukkyan is settled, the future of the mass grave at Mewaing is less clear. Francis from the CWGC said that even if peace does come to Kayin State, it’s unlikely the men would be repatriated to Taukkyan. “If the site became accessible it is more likely that we would consider whether it was possible to mark the graves in situ. Exhumation and movement of remains is always a last resort as we believe the individuals should be allowed to rest in peace.”
Sources:
http://www.rafcommands.com/forum/showthread.php?23671-357-Sqdn-Dakota-IV-KN584-Lost- 7-Sept-1945-Meiwang
http://aircrewremembered.com/smith-harold.html
https://frontiermyanmar.net/en/in-remembrance-wwii-descendants-seek-closure-in-yangon
John Devitt Stringfellow Pendlebury
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: John Devitt Stringfellow Pendlebury
Captain Pendlebury, John Devitt Stringfellow, Service Number 115317, Died 22/05/1941, Aged 36, General List, Son of Herbert Stringfellow Pendlebury and Lilian Dorothea Pendlebury; husband of Hilda Winifred Pendlebury, of Cambridge. M.A. (Cantab.): Archaeologist. Buried at Suda Bay War Cemetery, Greece, Grave 10. E. 13., Headstone Inscription “He has outsoared the shadow of our night”.
John Devitt Stringfellow Pendlebury was born in London in 1904 and his parents were Herbert Stringfellow Pendlebury and Lilian Dorothea Pendlebury. There are letters in the John Pendlebury Family Papers Archive at the British School at Athens sent home from John in 1923, while visiting archaeological sites in Greece during his Easter holidays of his final year at Winchester College. He returned to Greece after graduating in archaeology at Cambridge University in 1927. He was initially based at the British School at Athens and it was there that he met Hilda White, a keen archaeology student on sabbatical from school teaching. They married in 1928 and pursued their interests in Greece and particularly in Crete. During the war Hilda Pendlebury and their children, David and Joan, resided at 31 Barrow Road, Trumpington. In January 1940, John was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant on the General List and in June 1940 he was appointed Vice-Consul at Candia (the Venetian name for Heraklion). He worked for British Intelligence, a Captain in Special Operations Executive Force 133 in the Aegean, as he was an expert on the island of Crete and its people. Germany began an airborne invasion of Crete on the morning of 20 May 1941 and John Pendlebury was killed two days later. It took time for Hilda to clarify the facts behind her husband’s death. The archive contained details that she gathered from sources including local Cretans, which indicated that on 21 May he had been taken prisoner and placed in a local house for treatment, having been wounded in battle outside Canea Gate in Heraklion. However, the next day more Germans arrived, they took him outside the house and shot him. His final burial, after two previous sites, was at Suda Bay War Cemetery, Greece, Grave 10. E. 13., Headstone Inscription “He has outsoared the shadow of our night” – The inscription is a quote from the 352nd line of Adonaïs: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Bysshe Shelley. John Pendlebury has two memorials in Trumpington: his name engraved on the village war memorial and a separate memorial on the reverse of the wooden sign at the entrance to Trumpington Parish Churchyard to Captain John Pendlebury (“sometime scholar of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Killed in action in Crete May 1941”) and his wife, Hilda Winifred Pendlebury, who died on 5 March 1970.
Sources:
London Gazette. Commissioned. 2nd Lt . General List. 19 January 1940 John Devitt Stringfellow Pendlebury (1153I7).
https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/34791/supplement/920
London Gazette. Foreign Office, June 12, 1940. The King has been graciously pleased to appoint: — John Devitt Stringfellow Pendlebury, Esquire, to be His Majesty’s Vice-Consul at Candia
https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/34898/page/4358
The John Pendlebury Family Papers Archive Project at the British School at Athens
https://bsapendleburyproject.wordpress.com/category/biography/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pendlebury
Victor Charles White
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Victor Charles White
Private White, Victor Charles, Service Number 14205776, Died 14/05/1944, Aged 21, 9th Bn. Border Regiment, Son of Henry William and Dorothy Elizabeth White, of Trumpington, Cambridgeshire. Buried at Imphal War Cemetery, India, 2. C. 2., Headstone Inscription “Loved and remembered always”.
Victor White had been working for Messrs. Kerridge, Sturton Street, Cambridge, from his apprentice days, and, before joining the Forces, he was at the Trumpington First Aid Post. Private Victor Charles White was with the 9th Battalion Border Regiment when it sailed for India in May 1942. It became a Garrison Battalion in Calcutta until July 1943, when it joined the 17th Indian Light Division, which later became part of the 14th Army. In March 1944 the Japanese started their offensive to capture the Imphal Plain and the route to invade India. The Battle of Imphal continued until July 1944 when the Japanese were driven back to Burma with heavy losses. The casualty numbers for the Allies and the Japanese were 12,603 and 54,879 respectively.
Sources:
BBC WW2 People’s War 9th Border Regiment.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/user/46/u556046.shtml
Wikipedia, Battle of Imphal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Imphal
Charles Frank Horace Wiessner
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Charles Frank Horace Wiessner
Flight Lieutenant Wiessner, Charles Frank Horace, Service Number 63594, Died 11/12/1943, Aged 30, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, Son of Charles and Marie Wiessner; husband of Josephine Ethel Wiessner, of [71 Shelford Road,] Trumpington, Cambridgeshire, England. M.A., M.B. (Cantab). Buried at Bloemfontein (Hamilton) War Cemetery, South Africa, European Block. Grave 12.
Charles Frank Horace Wiessner, born in 1912, was the son of Charles and Marie Wiessner and husband of Josephine Ethel Wiessner, of 71 Shelford Road, Trumpington. He studied medicine at Cambridge and the Middlesex Hospital, qualifying M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. in 1938, and M.B., B. Ch. in 1940. In 1939 he married Josephine Cumberledge in London. He was for a short period in general practice in South-East London until appointed to a commission in the Medical Branch of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve on March 21, 1941. In the 1942 Medical Directory his address still appeared as 142 Lewisham Road, SE13. Flight Lieutenant Charles Frank Horace Wiessner, R.A.F.V.R., 63394, was Medical Officer at No.62, British Commonwealth Air Training School, Tempe, Bloemfontein, South Africa, when he and Lieutenant Patrick Ellis, 103312V, lost their lives on 11 December 1943, in an aircraft accident. A wing came off their plane, Harvard 11a SAAF 7085, in a loop and the plane crashed at Bultfontei.
Source: http://www.southafricawargraves.org/search/details.php?id=6587
Fl. Lt. C.F.H. Wiessner was buried at Bloemfontein (Hamilton) War Cemetery, South Africa, European Block. Grave 12, and Lt. P. Ellis was buried in the adjacent Grave 11. C.F.H. Wiessner was remembered on three war memorials, Trumpington; Downing College, Cambridge; and Lewisham United Reform Church.