Skip to main content

Heroism at the Hall


When the Luftwaffe Dropped In…

Village halls can have their darker side. A train crash in Devon turned one hall into a temporary mortuary. An inquest into a potential murder case was once held at a village hall in Northumberland. In the 1940s, deaths were liable to occur within the halls themselves…

In September 1940, Dorothy May White was working as a V.A.D. (Voluntary Aid Detachment) Nurse in Colgate, Sussex. Her actions during an air raid earned her the George Medal – this extract from The Times explains what happened:

V.A.D. White, with two other V.A.D.s, was on duty at the village hall when a high explosive bomb was dropped on the cottage next door, demolishing it. The three V.A.D.s found the nurse in the crater badly injured and with great difficulty they lifted her onto a stretcher and carried her to the village hall.
A bomb then fell directly onto the village hall, demolishing the end where the injured nurse lay, killing her, fatally injuring one of the V.A.D.s and severely injuring the other. With no thought for herself, V.A.D. White scrambled over the debris and found the two injured members partially covered by fallen rubble. She gave first aid with the help of a tourniquet made from her belt…”

Apparently, after helping the ambulance crew to remove her colleagues to hospital, she then dodged further bombs while making her way through the village to offer first aid help where it was needed. Her own home suffered damage but she continued to help other villagers over the days following the raid.

A deserving recipient of the George Medal indeed.



The is the Google Maps view of the current Colgate Village Hall - looks like a prefab replacement for the bombed out original

Instagram: @Woodswarechinaservinghatch



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Woods Ware China at the Serving Hatch - The Book!

I have now put together a book to accompany this blog, featuring all the best bits and much more besides, about the development and use of village halls over the past century.  It costs £1.29 for a Kindle download and £3.99 for a printed version.  Here's the blurb: "Enter any village hall and look at the noticeboard. The range of activities taking place these days is enough to keep anyone entertained. Cinema evenings, keep fit classes, scouts, Women’s Institute, St John’s Ambulance, lunch clubs, support groups - all keeping the physical and spiritual on the straight and narrow. Where would we be without the village hall? What a marvellous innovation, and one that seems to grow in importance as we realise that we have lost sight of community somewhat, and need to nurse it back to life. You might, if you were in a particularly philosophical mood while hanging around the vestibule, wonder where and how it all began." English village halls have been a fixture of our lands...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Ode to the Village Hall

I hope that some of my own poems that I have published on this blog have raised a smile of recognition. But I’m not the first to write poetry inspired by village halls. Back in 1936, the Warwick Advertiser published an article about a Mr Smith, who had written a poem about the village hall at Hatton. This was so well received by friends and family, that he had 401 copies printed, and he sold them for a pound apiece. The profits were divided between the church fund and the working men’s club fund. Hatton Village Hall - the charming inspiration Happily for us, the Warwick Advertiser saw fit to publish Mr Smith’s acrostic: T his grand village hall which can scare be surpassed H as been built by one to remember those passed E ver thoughtful of others, kind friend of us all V ery ready to help and obey duty’s call I n summer or winter, in sunshine or rain L ending a hand without seeking to gain L ooking after the sick and helping the weak A nd a kind cheery s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bogarde's Beginnings

Village halls played a part in the early careers of many actors – some of them becoming world renowned. Who knows just how many household names first got a taste for the luvvie life at the local amateur dramatic society. Dirk Bogarde was certainly one of them, because he wrote about his experiences at Newick Village Hall, near Lewes. Dirk’s mother made the acquaintance of a Mrs Cox, whose husband was said to own the village hall. Dirk became good friends with the Coxs’ daughter and the family took to him, allowing him to indulge his teenage ambition of becoming a playwright. He wrote, and starred in “The Man on the Bench”, supported by Nerine Cox.   It was performed around the time that Nazi Germany had marched into Austria – but a sparse audience with a lot on their minds nevertheless received it well. Mr Cox offered Dirk his first leading role shortly afterwards with the Newick Amateur Drama Society – Raleigh in R.C. Sherriff’s “Journey’s End”. “It was a tremendous ...
Post a Comment
Read more