WW2 100 - 6 September 1943 - 'At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember him': Marine John Philip Richards, Royal Marines (1924-43)
Continued from 8 August 1943
SERGEANT CHARLES PHILIP SOUTHCOTT (1914-43) RAFVR, 61 Squadron
https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2021/01/ww2-75-8-august-1943-thundering-through.html
The grave of John Philip Richards in St Peter’s Burial Ground
Image credit: www.findagrave.com
Google the words 'friendly fire' and you can’t fail to be horrified by the list of incidents in warfare where forces have been accidentally attacked by those on the same side. I was saddened by the case of Royal Marine Lt James Ayers Bayley, killed on a firing range while on a training exercise organised by Dalditch Camp. You can read about him here
Such incidents often remain unknown for many years, as do the cases of self-inflicted death or injury. The immense research conducted by historian Don Kindell into naval casualties includes simply the acronym DOWS next to John’s name, noting him as a Marine of the Plymouth Division and dating his death as September 1943. It took me a bit of time to work out that it means ‘Died of wounds’.
A view of St Agnes: looking up Town Hill to the Church and St Agnes Hotel Image credit: Wikipedia
But in the admirable work conducted by Cornwall Online Parish Clerks, listing all deaths of Cornish-born individuals from UK, British Army and Navy Birth, Marriage & Death Records, 1730-1960, transcribed by Julia Mitchell, I found this entry: ‘Died 06-Sep 1943 Dalditch Camp, Exmouth Self inflicted gun shot wound whilst balance of his mind was disturbed’. https://www.opc-cornwall.org
He was 19 years old.
A 1904 image showing the Great Western Railway tramway at Newquay Harbour. Image credit: A postcard in the Geoff Sheppard Collection/Wikipedia
John was in fact born at Newquay in Cornwall on 4 August 1924. He was the eldest of four children born to Louis Philip Richards, a dentist, and Elizabeth Scott Richards. Elizabeth, born in Scotland in 1893, had married John's father in the St Austell District, which included Newquay, in 1923.
The couple had three other children, born between 1925 and 1932. Louis Philip Richards died in 1934 at Par, Cornwall, and his widow re-married in 1939 to Arthur R. Clayton, in Kensington, London.
From the 1939 Register, it appears that she and her
three youngest were living in Newquay, at 114 Hinson Road according to Budleigh Salterton parish records. However it is possible that the new
family moved to Devon. Not only was John living there in the Forces, but one of
his brothers later married in Devon in 1956.
The only connection
with St Agnes, as mentioned in the CWGC listing, is that Arthur Clayton and his
wife - John's mother - were living in the village when he died in Truro on 1
January 1957. She was granted probate and died in St Agnes in 1966.
I'm really grateful to
St Agnes Museum for providing so much detailed information about John's family.
But I’m left with some questions.
Above: The original building of Newquay County School, built in 1909, on the town’s Edgecumbe Avenue. It later became the Boys’ Grammar School. Was this where John was a pupil before applying for the Royal Marines? Image credit: Newquay Junior Academy/Newquay Education Trust
Image credit: Simon Fogg
Woodbury Common, only a few miles from where John lies
buried in Budleigh Salterton, with its wild landscape of undulating gorse and
heather covered heathland has been used by the military for centuries. In
Autumn 1941, tents and marquees began to be replaced by Nissen huts. By 1943,
when John died, Dalditch Camp had came into being as a large training centre
for Royal Marine recruits. At its zenith there were over 6,000 inhabitants in
what became virtually a small town until it closed in November
1946.
Further
questions go through my mind. What drove John to take his own life, if indeed
this is what happened?
How
stressful was the wartime training for
Royal Marines? They had, and have, to be tough in a way that I could never be! Many
of them would be used in Special Operations behind enemy lines, and by 1943,
Dalditch recruits would know that capture on such missions would usually mean death. On 18
October 1942, Hitler had issued a Commando Order, which called for the execution
of all captured commandos. A member of
Facebook’s Budleigh – Past and Present group told me how, 30 years ago, she had
taken her father – a former Royal Marine who had fought with the Chindits in
Burma – to the remains of Dalditch Camp on Woodbury Common. He had mentioned the suicides of recruits such
as John.
More questions! Do any relatives visit John's grave in St Peter’s Burial Ground?
Had John heard of the equally tragic case which had occurred the previous year at Dalditch Camp, when a young Lieutenant Richard Michael Griffiths had died? Were the circumstances similar? A school record from Dulwich College, London, where Richard had been a pupil, tells us that he had enlisted in the Royal Marines shortly after his seventeenth birthday, that he had been promoted to lieutenant in 1942, that he was in charge of the battalion motor-cyclists and had died on 26 May that year, ‘of wounds accidentally received on service not far from their battle-posts at Dalditch’.
But a report in the Western Morning News of 30 May 1942 tells a different story, under the headline ‘TRICK’ ENDS IN DEATH. Richard, described as ‘of a high spirited nature’, had apparently asked a friend ‘How would you like to take a 6 to 1 chance?’ and had shot himself with the revolver that he was holding to his head. His grave is in All Saints Churchyard in East Budleigh.
'Lack of moral fibre' was the semi-official description of those servicemen who found the stress of wartime too much to bear. It was applied, for example, by senior officers to novices in Bomber Command who simply 'could not cope' with those terrifying missions. Perhaps actions like those of young Lieutenant Griffiths stemmed from bravado, from a desperate and deep-seated determination to show that no one could accuse them of cowardice. They may simply have resulted from a moment of stupid banter.
While researching the life of Chelmsford-born Pilot Officer John Alastair Seabrook, who died on 10 July 1942, I came across the tragic record of William Henry Morris’ death. He was a Territorial soldier with a four-year-old daughter who was based at the Drill Hall in Chelmsford. In March 1940 he was found there with sixteen stab wounds in his chest from which he died in hospital afterwards.
‘He was smothered with blood,’ said a witness. ‘I asked him what
had happened, and he mumbled and said, “They called me a coward, and to prove
that I am not I have done this.” An inquest later
concluded he had committed suicide, but dismissed the remark about cowardice as
‘a pure delusion’. The record is published online as a tribute to Chelmsford
people who died in WW2 on the website www.chelmsfordwarmemorial.co.uk
I am continuing to make
further enquiries in Cornwall. It’s such a sad story that I feel that Cornish
people, like us Devonians in the former Dalditch Camp area, should remember poor John Philip
Richards among the victims of the 1939-45 world conflict.
The next post is for Marine Arthur John Wilson (1925-43) who died on 1 Nov 1943 while serving with the Royal Marines. You can read about him at
https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2021/01/ww2-75-1-november-1943-another-dalditch.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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