Budleigh Past and Present

  Continued from 8 August 1944 ‘God’s Greatest Gift – Remembrance’: Signaller Ronald Yeats (1916-44) https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/10/www2-75-gods-greatest-gift-remembrance.html   Banneville-la-Campagne War Cemetery Image credit: Commonwealth War Graves Commission Tackling this WW2 project chronologically has made me aware of some strange coincidences in the stories of these young men from Budleigh Salterton whose lives were so cruelly cut short. There was Signaller Ronald Yeats, for example, who died on 8 August  in Normandy while serving with The Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey). You may have just read his story if you click on the link at the top of this page.   By chance he was buried in Banville-la-Campagne war cemetery, pictured above. It’s where you will also find the grave of Major George Tristram Palmer, killed just three weeks earlier while attached to a different regiment, the Highland Light Infantry. George Palmer’s story is...

Continued from 9 July 1944 AIR MECHANIC (L) 2 nd CLASS ALFRED EDWIN CLARKE (1910-44)    Royal Navy, HMS Ukussa https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2021/03/ww2-75-9-july-1944-death-on-island.html       Budleigh Salterton War Memorial at the junction of Coastguard Road and Salting Hill It’s frustrating to find no obvious local connections with a name on a war memorial. With George Palmer it’s the opposite: the Palmer name is well known in Budleigh Salterton and the surrounding area. George himself is remembered by at least one local person as a heroic figure who died ‘parachuting into Arnhem’. In reality he died well before Arnhem and is buried in Normandy. It is worth pointing out, incidentally, that George’s name appears on the otherwise excellent Devon Heritage website as C.T. Palmer, his death being ‘Not yet confirmed’. It’s clearly an understandable misreading of the inscription on Budleigh’s War Memorial. As this WW2 project progressed...