Budleigh Past and Present

Continued from    18 April 1945 – Death of a ‘Tankie’ in Italy. SERJEANT FRANCIS EDWARD STEWARD (1918-45)      8th Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2024/01/ww2-75-18-april-1945-death-of-tankie-in.html   The headstone on David’s grave in Hamburg’s Ohlsdorf Cemetery . It bears the inscription THANK YOU, DARLING, FOR THOSE NINETEEN BLISSFULLY HAPPY YEARS. GOD BLESS YOU Just a few weeks before VE Day, the death of David Hubert Harvey-Williams on 19 April 1945 was recorded. He was only 19. Those two facts are tragic, and the absence of his name from Budleigh Salterton’s War Memorial only adds to the sad event.   The Commonwealth War Graves Commission list of casualties, pictured above, notes that he was buried in Hamburg Cemetery in Germany, and that he was the son of Robert Harvey-Williams and Doris Harvey-Williams ‘of Budleigh Salterton’.   His service number was 3...

    The Central American country of Nicaragua barely makes it into the world news media nowadays. Not so long ago its civil war between opposing forces of the so-called Sandinistas and Contras was grabbing the headlines. Not just for the ferocity of the conflict and for the inevitable involvement of the US and Russia but also for the way in which the war split families. ‘ Uncles shot at nephews, brothers at brothers, and we even know of fathers and sons who were on opposite sides of the conflict,’ as Nicaragua-based journalist Carlos Powell wrote so poignantly.         Parents of Frederick William Fley (1868-1932) James John Godfrey Fley (1832-1916) and Jane Fley, née Abell (1832-1868) with some of their children. The photographer, William Beer, had established a portrait studio in Chapel Street, Exmouth, around 1865. Photo courtesy of Jane Gray What most East Devon people are unaware of is how the Nicaraguan civil war tragically split a family with ...