WW2 100 - 8 August 1944 - ‘God’s Greatest Gift – Remembrance’: Signaller Ronald Yeats, 1st Battalion The Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey), (1916-44)
CONTINUED FROM 16 JULY 1944
MAJOR GEORGE TRISTRAM PALMER (1915-44)
Devonshire Regiment, 12th Airborne Battalion
https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2021/03/ww2-75-16-july-1944-leader-full-of-dash.html
Troops with a stretcher clambering over the heaped
rubble of destroyed buildings in a badly-damaged street of the beautiful city
of Caen on 9 July 1944 Image credit:
Imperial War Museums
Banneville-la-Campagne, a few miles to the east of
the city of Caen, with less than 200 residents, is a peaceful and unremarkable small
village in the district of Calvados. It seems hard to believe now in the scenes
of battle and devastation that marked this area of Normandy following the Allied
invasion of France on 6 June 1944.
Banneville-la-Campagne War Cemetery
Image credit: Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Yet the 2,170 Commonwealth graves in Banneville’s War Cemetery, the main feature of the village, testify to the savagery which marked the struggle between Allied and German forces during the advance eastwards. Most of the men buried at Banneville-la-Campagne War Cemetery were killed in the fighting from the second week of July 1944, when Caen was captured, to the last week in August.
Budleigh’s War Memorial showing Ron’s name
Among the dead was 28-year-old Private Ronald Yeats, the last name in the list of WW2 casualties on Budleigh Salterton’s war memorial. Ron, as his family knew him, was killed in action on 8 August 1944 while serving with the 1/5th Battalion, The Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey) and the Royal Corps of Signals.
His
service number was 5626446.
Pictured above is Ron and his wife with their daughter Jennifer, aged two months during Ron's last Army leave in 1944, as we can read from the note written by Margaret
He left behind his wife Margaret Ethel and their eight-month-old daughter Jennifer who were living at 17 Boyne Road, and his widowed mother, of ‘Leas View’ in Leas Road, Budleigh Salterton.
A
local newspaper’s report of Ron’s death
News
of Ron’s death was widely reported in the local press, as he was very well
known in the town. He was born on 22 December 1915 to Walter Herbert Yeats and
his wife Florence Louise Yeats, and grew up in Budleigh with
his elder brothers Frederick, Herbert and George. Friends spoke of Ron’s happy disposition.
Pupils of St Peter’s School, Budleigh Salterton in 1926. Was Ron one of them? The School had an allotment next to the railway line, and this was the gardening team. Photo from the collection of Fairlynch Museum
Ron as Scout Leader with the 1st Budleigh Scouts
Above: Ron with his wife Margaret, who was a Guide Leader
Ron was also a Scout. He had had the reputation of living up to the Scouts’ maxim of ‘a good deed a day’ and later became Assistant Scoutmaster of the 1st Budleigh Scouts.
Ron (front row, far right) with Budleigh Salterton Football Club' winning team in the 1937-38 Thursday League Challenge Cup competition. Identified so far by name, together with Ron, are: Standing: 1. 2. 3 (Les Dolling), 4. 5. 6. 7 (Cyril Teed)
Sitting: 8. 9. 10. 11. 12 (Ron Yeats)
In his spare time he was also a keen footballer of the Thursday team and was an honorary serving member of the Salterton and District British Legion.
The
Temple Methodist Church, Fore Street, Budleigh Salterton
He was a member of the Methodist Church Choir for many years. A fellow-member of the Choir was Private Leonard Critchard who had been reported killed in Burma on 29 April 1944, aged 23.
Bank House, Seaton
Before the war Ron had been a grocer’s assistant at the Seaton branch of Messrs Trump, and previously at Wilson’s Stores at 2 High Street, Budleigh.
A wartime photo: Margaret and Ron
A few months after war broke out, on 9 December 1939, he married 25-year-old Margaret Ethel Tapley at the Temple Methodist Church in Budleigh Salterton.
Ron had been living in lodgings at Bank House, conveniently situated near Trump’s grocery store on Fore Street in Seaton, but Margaret was living in Budleigh, which may explain why the wedding took place there. The daughter of Broadclyst decorator Edmund Tapley, she had been employed in domestic service in a succession of well-off households. She had worked for the Ackland family at Killerton, and for the Sheriff of Exeter, and when she married Ron she was living at ‘Shene’ in Swains Road, Budleigh Salterton.
Portrait of Ethel Warneford Larcombe in March 1932 by Bassano Ltd and a drawing representing her husband, Major Larcombe. Photo from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery; Image of Major Larcombe credit
www.roehamptonclub.co.uk
This was the home of equally high-profile employers, Major Dudley Larcombe and his wife Ethel. Major Larcombe had managed the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships for many years, and Ethel had even greater star status as a tennis and badminton player; she had won the Ladies’ Singles Tennis Title at the Wimbledon Championships in 1912, as well as 11 badminton titles at the All England Badminton Championships.
Cap badge of the Queen’s Royal Regiment, showing the Paschal Lamb, said to be the oldest of all regimental badges
Ron
and Margaret had only a short time to enjoy married life in their new home on Budleigh’s
Boyne Road. From April 1940 Ron served with the Devonshire Regiment for a few
months before joining a battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment on its return
from France. He remained in the same unit for four years, during which time he
was stationed on the East Coast during the Battle of Britain, an area which was
subject to severe enemy bombing. Prior to D-Day on 6 June 1944, he was transferred
to the Queen’s Royal Regiment and with his battalion embarked for France on 8 June,
ready for the final assault on Fortress Europe.
A serious-looking Ron in uniform outside his home in Boyne Road, Budleigh Salterton
Perhaps it crossed Ron’s mind that he was part of the colossal rescue mission to free not just Europe from Nazi tyranny. His brother George, a regular soldier in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, had been wounded and captured in 1940 while fighting in France and had spent the past four years as a Prisoner-of-War. Equally he must have had at the back of his mind the sickening thought that he might never again see his family, for he and Margaret now had the responsibility of their little daughter Jennifer Margaret, born on 20 December the previous year.
Map of the Caen area, showing Banneville-la-Campagne to the east. Image credit: Wikimedia
The
city of Caen lies only ten miles from the coast, and early on it was envisaged
by the planners of Operation ‘Overlord’ – the Battle of Normandy - that it was
the main objective of the invading Allied forces. The British General Montgomery,
who had defeated German forces under Field-Marshal Rommel at El Alamein in
North Africa, was in command of
all Allied ground forces during ‘Overlord’ and saw the city as of immense strategic
importance, being a vital road and rail centre. ‘I was convinced that strong
and persistent offensive action in the Caen sector would achieve our object of drawing
the enemy reserves on to our eastern flank: this was my basic conception,’ he
wrote.
The remains of a Bren gun carrier blown up by a mine in Tilly-sur-Seulles, on 19 June 1944 during Operation ‘Perch’. The town was described as ‘one of the first of the many towns and villages which were well-nigh obliterated in the process of liberation’.
Image credit: Sergeant Midgley No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit. Photograph B 5777 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums (collection no. 4700-29)
On 10 June, Montgomery launched Operation ‘Perch’ with the aim of taking Caen with a pincer movement. A series of operations were dogged by bad weather, with supplies held up and slow progress in the face of fierce resistance. Caen was bombed on 9 July to weaken the Germans’ resistance, but 2,000 French citizens lost their lives.
In fact it took Allied forces around seven weeks to finally liberate the city on 20 July. In the ferocious fighting, much of Caen was destroyed and had to be rebuilt in the post-war period.
What is known as the Battle of the Falaise Pocket, south of Caen, took place from 12 to 21 August 1944, and was the decisive engagement of the Battle of Normandy in the Second World War. The battle resulted in the defeat of German forces west of the Seine, opening the way to Paris and the Franco-German border for the Allied armies on the Western Front.
Image
credit: No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Wilkes (Sgt) -
http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//49/media-49229/large.jpg This is
photograph B 9627 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums
But sadly, Ron did not live to see these victories.
It would be so good to know more details of Ron’s individual contributions during this decisive phase in the struggle against Nazism. Members of the Royal Corps of Signals, like Ron, served in every theatre of war. In one notable action, Corporal Thomas Waters of the 5th Parachute Brigade Signal Section was awarded the Military Medal for laying and maintaining the field telephone line under heavy enemy fire across the Caen Canal Bridge during the Battle of Normandy in June 1944.
It was dangerous as well as courageous work. ‘First in, last out’ was the Corps’ proud boast. The website of the Royal Signals Museum at Blandford Camp in Dorset notes that Royal Signals’ soldiers arrived in Poland on the day war broke out and so became the first British unit to see action in the Second World War. They had been given false passports and improbable occupations – including a Captain described as a ‘musician’ who could not play a note!
Signallers needed technical and tactical skills to provide and operate Field Headquarters, and to ensure commanders had battle-winning information by installing, operating, maintaining and running the communications equipment that was essential to all military operations. World War Two saw a total of 4,362 members of the Royal Signals give their lives.
The contractor’s
schedule for the headstone on Ron’s grave
‘God’s Greatest Gift –
Remembrance’ is the inscription left by Margaret on Ron’s headstone in the War
Cemetery of Banneville-la-Campagne, and it’s appropriate that the internet is
being used to remember him for his family. You could say that the internet,
which I feel is one of the great miracles of my lifetime, is the obvious way to
perpetuate memories.
Inevitably, it led me to wonder what happened to Margaret, widowed at the age of 30 with a young child to care for. Two years after Ron’s death, on 23 May 1946 at the Congregational Chapel in Beer, she married Charles Wilfred Minhinnett. She and Ron had been friends with him and his first wife and had enjoyed their times together in the Seaton area.
Born in South Tawton, Devon, Charlie as he was known in the family, had been previously widowed. Like Ron he worked in the grocery business. Shortly after that, Charlie was moved to Colyton Trump stores as manager. Two years later, on 19 April 1948, Charlie and Margaret’s son Peter Charles Lang Minhinnett, was born, a half-brother to Jennifer. They then moved to Crediton where they ran their own shop together. A Deacon of Crediton Congregational Church, member of St John’s Ambulance Brigade, the local Choral Society, Standard Bearer for the British Legion and a Special Constable, Charlie was as respected in his local community as Ron had been. He died in Crediton on 19 August 1982. As for Margaret, she died at the great age of 97: a long life filled with some sad, but no doubt many happy memories.
Ron is remembered on the Memorial in the Temple Methodist Church in Budleigh as well as on the town's War Memorial.
The next post is for DRIVER CYRIL JOHN LOCKYEAR (1918-44) who died in Normandy on 26 Aug 1944 while serving in 143rd Field Park Squadron, the Royal Engineers. You can read about him at
https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2021/03/ww2-75-26-august-1944-adopted-in.html
These ‘orphans’ are listed on Budleigh Salterton War
Memorial, but have not been identified. Their first names,
date of death and service numbers are not known.
They are recorded on the Devon Heritage website as
'Not yet confirmed’
If you know anything which would help to identify them,
please contact Michael Downes on 01395 446407.
F.E. Newcombe
P. Pritchard
F.J. Watts
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