Bidborough’s Newfoundlanders

The small church of St Lawrence sits on its own small hill in the village of Bidborough, flanked by its small graveyard. The graveyard faces to the west, with a view across the rolling wooded hills of the Kentish Weald. iKentish Weald. K Many generations of Bidborough folk lie there, with a stroll amongst them revealing some familiar family names rolling back through the years. Amongst these village folk lie two strangers, their bright, white wartime gravestones standing together by the path down to the Lychgate: Isaac Kirby and J B Phippard, both Gunners of the 59^th (Newfoundland) Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery.

Who were they, where did they come from and why are they here, resting amongst us an ocean away from the homes where they too were cherished?

Newfoundland is a sparsely populated island about the size of Great Britain off the Atlantic coast of Canada. It is largely rocky and inhospitable with small towns and villages dotted around the coast, some of them even today accessible only by boat.  Roughly half the population live in and around the capital, St John’s, which grew around a large and sheltered natural harbour on the east coast looking towards Greenland.

Newfoundland was the first north American land to be found by Europeans, remarkably by the Vikings a thousand years ago. The first baby known to have been born of European parents in north America was born on the island in 1613. It is an ancient and distinctive land, and at the time of our two Gunners it was a separate Dominion of the British Empire: they would not have thought themselves Canadian.

Newfoundland raised a regiment to support the Empire in the First World War. Eight hundred men volunteered, from a population of 240,000. They became known as the “Blue Puttees” from the distinctive leggings which completed their uniform.  At 8.45 am on 1st July 1916 they went over the top at Beaumont-Hamel on the Somme. At roll call the next morning just sixty-eight men remained alive to answer. Most had been dead by 9.00 am.

By 1939 it was obvious that the island could no longer afford to raise and equip its own regiment. However, so many men from the island wanted to serve that something had to be done, and done it was: the Royal Artillery agreed to raise a regiment on the island. In the event such was the rush they raised two regiments, the 59^th being the second.

The Royal Artillery is one of the oldest corps in the British Army and it has its own way of doing things. Thus young Kirby and Phippard found themselves not Private soldiers but Gunners. We know Phippard travelled to England on a ship called Nerissa, embarking from St John’s but calling at Halifax in Nova Scotia and Boston before crossing the Atlantic to arrive in Liverpool. He had grown up in Placentia, a relatively large fishing port on the south coast but still only home to 1,900 people. Kirby’s village Pouch Cove was even tinier. What must they have made of Liverpool?

The 59^th was a Heavy Artillery regiment. They were trained to use the heaviest guns that could be moved, and they were moved on low loaders by massive Scammell tractors built for the purpose. The regiment was divided into batteries, each battery consisting of four guns. Each gun needed a crew of ten to move it, prepare it and fire it.

On arrival in England the Regiment was first based at Ardingly, a few miles from Bidborough in Sussex.  After training the 59^th was deployed across south east England for roles in coastal protection and to support training exercises with live fire.

Two batteries were stationed in Bidborough in the grounds of two of the larger village houses, Bidborough Court and Glebelands, and were engaged in providing live fire for exercises. This must have been very strenuous work. Setting up a gun emplacement of this size involved a lot of preparation not just in moving the guns but also in digging the emplacements and supporting trenches, all by pick and shovel. The soldiers lived in Nissen Huts that were erected on the lawns, a battery at each house. The two batteries shared a canteen which was established in the village hall and a local woman, Ethel Paynter, took a job at the canteen and went on to organise social events for the Newfoundlanders in the village pub.

David Tolhurst was a small boy at the time. “We village children used to gather outside the hall/canteen as the soldiers were going in and give them our threepences and ask them to buy us Mars Bars and other sweets. Ninety nine per cent of them came back out with the sweets. We learnt to remember who didn’t! I built up a wonderful collection of Newfoundland stamps by asking the soldiers. “   

“We were very impressed by the enormous Scammell trucks that the Newfoundlanders used to move their big guns around. When evacuee children arrived from London they taught us innocent village children all sorts of things that we shouldn’t have known. On one occasion we got into the cab of one of the Scammells and a London boy, I don’t know how, managed to get it started on the battery and we drove it around for a while. There was a bit of a row about that.”

“The Newfoundlanders used to stack all their shells outside, in the village. I don’t know what would have happened if the Luftwaffe had managed to bomb them. Did their shells have explosives in them, I don’t know?”

“Some of the Newfoundlanders took up with local girls and stayed on after the war. I remember one who had a local girlfriend and wanted to stay shot himself in the foot when it came to D-Day and they were off to France. Nobody said anything. It was just treated as an accident, he was invalided out and settled down in Southborough, with his lame foot.”

So the 59^th’s English village life came to an end when they embarked for France after D-Day and they were to fight their way as far as Hamburg, firing their last rounds two days before the German surrender. The regimental history records that a few casualties were sustained during training as was to be expected given the heavy and dangerous nature of their work.

Isaac Kirby was the first to be killed. He was run down by a military truck during the blackout on the night of March 2^nd, 1943.

The Courier of 12^th March records: The funeral of Gunner Isaac Kirby, Newfoundland Regiment, who died on Saturday as the result of an accident took place in Bidborough on Saturday. As the cortege left the church the organist, Mr T Strickland, played Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary by special request. At the graveside six of the gunner’s colleagues fired a last volley in salute. Those present included Officers NCOs and men of deceased’s regiment. Lt J Gougan, L-Cpl R Jones, Ptes F W Large, A S Denby and R Painter (representing the Home Guard), Superintendent J Puckham, Sergt. W J Eames, Special Constables R Watson and W Rye (representing the Special Constabulary), Chief Warden Lyon Scott, Assistant Warden T Addams and Wardens B Ball and F Broad; Mrs Nash, Miss Dallimore, Miss Norman, Miss Monk, Mrs Moore, the Misses N & M Mulkeen, Mrs F Broad, Mrs H Tolhurst and Miss B Tolhurst, Mrs Heard, Miss D Gayler, W.L.A [sic], Mrs M Smith, Mrs Vinall, Misses J & O Weybell, Mrs Eames, Miss W Broad, Miss E Hall and Mrs Painter.

Floral tributes were received from Officers of the Newfoundland Regiment, NCO’s and other Ranks, Mother and Father, friends from the Hare & Hounds, Civil Defence, Mrs M Smith, Mom, Dick, Mary & Norah, Mrs Tolhurst and Betty, The Village Children, Sister and Nursing Staff of Chiddingstone, Doreen Gayler, W.L.A, “Two Unknown Friends” and “Two of His Pals”.

Isaac was 23. The funeral report is striking: Bidborough had clearly taken the Newfoundlanders to its heart, and poor Isaac to judge from the floral tributes from the pub and the children (and the quantity of unmarried lady mourners) had clearly been enjoying himself.

Isaac was born in Pouch Cove, Newfoundland in 1920.  He was the fifth of seven children of Henry (Harry) and Elizabeth Anne Kirby.   The sixth of those children died when a young child.  

Pouch (pronounced “Pooch”) Cove is a small village located on the Avalon Peninsula on the east coast of Newfoundland.  Pouch Cove has no sheltered harbour.  It is exposed to the North Atlantic and all that the wind and sea can throw at it, in a land where the local saying is that Newfoundland has but two, not four, seasons in the year: winter, and July.  Isaac’s father was a fisherman for most of his life.  Prior to his marriage he would travel to the U.S. to work during the fishing season.  After he married, he fished from Pouch Cove.

Harry was determined that his children be educated and take advantage of opportunities to become professionals. Ultimately, five of the surviving six left Pouch Cove for further education and took up their professions elsewhere. Isaac alone chose to remain at home and to become a fisherman with his father.  Both his brother and sister-in-law remember Isaac as a personable young man, well liked in his community and always there when someone needed a helping hand.

Isaac joined up when the 59^th was formed in 1940.  His younger brother Lorne says that Isaac had been trained as a signaller and that he wrote home telling them that he was studying every night to improve his skills, so he wasn’t in the pub every evening. Lorne, then a young boy, thought of Isaac as being like a scout who would move forward to locate more precisely enemy targets and communicate the details to the regiment to enable more precise bombardment by the guns. Isaac had been chosen for a role demanding self-reliance and initiative.

The next disaster to befall the 59^th was on 6^th April 1943, when a shell exploded prematurely in the hands of Boyd Phippard.

Again the Courier reported on 30^th April: The funeral of the late Gunner John Boyd Phippard aged 23 of the 59^th Newfoundland Regiment, who died as a result of an accident, took place in St Lawrence churchyard on Thursday week. Requiem Mass was said by Father Farrell, who officiated at the graveside. The coffin was draped with the Newfoundland flag. Mourners were Flt. Lt. R Phippard, Miss Betty Honey, NCO’s and men of the 23td Battery, Segt. Edwards, Miss D Gayler, Mrs Tolhurst, Miss Betty Tolhurst, and Mrs Painter. Civil Defence was represented by Mr Lyon Scott, Chief Warden; Mr T Addams, Mr Pink, Mr Ball, Mr Preston, Mr Broad, Miss Dallimore, Miss Bassett Mrs Eames and Mrs Hughes.

So a quieter affair than the send-off given to Isaac, or perhaps not. Boyd may have been let down by a lazy reporter, or a sub-editor in need of space. It seems difficult to believe that Boyd did not get the volley over his grave, I am sure he did.  At least unlike Isaac, who was mourned by his new friends and countrymen but not by family, Boyd’s funeral was attended by one of his brothers: Robert Lancelot Phippard, who was also serving on our shores. Sadly Robert also died young, so his son never knew his father or heard tell of poor Uncle Boyd. We know very little of Boyd’s brief life although we can guess that like Isaac he embodied the Newfoundland virtues of endurance and community spirit.

Boyd was born in St John’s in February 1920, but his parents Roy and Genevieve moved to Placentia where Boyd was raised. He had at least four siblings, so like Isaac he came from a large and very poor family. Placentia is one of the oldest towns in Newfoundland having been  established by Basque fishermen in the early 16^th century. Once it had been second only to St John’s as a population centre but by Boyd’s time it had declined in significance, the large sandy beach proving useful only as a convenient place to dry the salt cod from which the town scratched a living.

It is in the nature of village life that the same mourners’ names occur in both funeral reports, and one of these is Mrs Paynter.  Ethel undoubtedly knew both Isaac and Boyd. Indeed, she had invited Isaac into her home when he had some leave so that he was able to escape from life in a tin shed for a few days and enjoy a roof over his head. When Isaac was killed she wrote to his mother, as did the young woman who was with him when he died. The Kirby family remember that this correspondence continued for the rest of Ethel and Elizabeth’s lives. It is not known if she also wrote to Genevieve, it is at least possible. Ethel also made it her business to tend the two lads’ graves and continued to care for them until her own death in the 1960’s.

So that is the story of Bidborough’s two Newfoundlanders. I am most grateful to Rosemary Phippard and Margaret Cameron, nee Kirby, for their help and to John Phippard and John Noel, both of St John’s, for putting me in touch with them, and to David Tolhurst for his memories. If these brief notes prompt any memories I would be most interested to hear from you.

Robin Peterson