WW2 100: The Yanks and Budleigh Salterton - Ike was here. Or was he?

Commander in Chief of the Allied forces General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Image credit: www.dodmedia.osd.mil

When the USA came into WW2 to fight against the Axis dictators Devon was an obvious place for Allied forces to rehearse the invasion of Normandy. The county is justly proud of its hedgerows. It has more of them than any other region in England, just like the landscape of tiny enclosed fields and sunken lanes which make up what is known as ‘le bocage’ in that part of northern France.

It seems that some of the Allied generals underestimated the difficulty that cumbersome tanks would face in such a landscape. Historians of WW2 often refer to the frustrating and deadly months of June and July 1944 as ‘The War of the Hedgerows’. So many Allied soldiers lost their lives to German snipers at that time. 

 

Sheplegh Court, near Blackawton in South Devon

But Devon was also, it seems, an ideal base for the generals to plan D Day while hidden away in the county’s secluded mansions and manor houses. My mother-in-law was born in 1920 at Sheplegh Court outside the village of Blackawton, in the deep woodlands of the South Hams. She later moved elsewhere with her family, but was always proud of the rumour that Eisenhower had stayed there during WW2. No hard evidence was ever found, she admitted.

Twenty years have passed since my last visit to Sheplegh, and now I see that it has been split into holiday apartments and marketed as a house visited not just by Eisenhower but by Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Montgomery. ‘Who knows?’ prospective residents are told. ‘The invasion might have been planned in the very room you stay in.’

Hale Lodge, Westfield Close, Budleigh Salterton

Here in Budleigh Salterton there are similar claims. Local resident Paul Davie is convinced that Hale Lodge, a large property dating from 1923 in Westfield Close, was the headquarters of American forces during the planning for 

D-Day.  Eisenhower certainly put in an appearance in Exeter. 

You can watch him inspecting troops of the 320^th Regiment in Exeter on YouTube by clicking  here.

Sarah Bussy’s book, Joyce Dennys and Budleigh Salterton: An Artist’s Life and Work in her Place and Times 1893-1991, is available from Fairlynch Museum in Budleigh Salterton

Thanks to Budleigh resident Sarah Bussy and her recently published work about Joyce Dennys more people now know that this local author and artist, wife of Budleigh’s ‘Dr Tom’, wrote two books which portray life during WW2 in a small Devon coastal community, obviously Budleigh Salterton.

The books, Henrietta's War and Henrietta Sees It Through, are based on letters supposedly written by the main character, the fictitious GP’s wife Henrietta Brown, to her childhood friend Robert. In a letter dated 23 February 1944 in the book, Henrietta writes that her daughter Linnet had seen the general in Exeter. It is a fact that Eisenhower was in Devon during that month.  

General Eisenhower addresses American troops in the run-up to D-Day. Image credit: www.archives.gov 

A planning application document published by East Devon District Council in 2015 included the comment that Hale Lodge had been nominated for inclusion in the Budleigh Salterton Heritage Asset List because of its links with Eisenhower and Montgomery.

The front of Hale Lodge 

There is no actual proof that either of those two Allied generals visited Budleigh or Hale Lodge.

But an article in the East Devon and Exmouth Journal of 18 June 1984 featured former GI Harry Smith who remembered that it was visited, in his words, ‘by such people as Eisenhower and Montgomery’.

General Sir Bernard Montgomery in 1943, and his double, Clifton James  Image credit: Wikipedia

Montgomery had a well known double of course – used by British Intelligence to deceive the enemy during World War Two, especially during the crucial period of early 1944 when plans for D Day were being made. Strangely, I’ve not been able to find out whether Ike also had one.