Ken Porter - Laindon in the Great War

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
PEN & SWORD MILITARY
an imprint of
Pen and Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Copyright Ken Porter & Stephen Wynn 2014

ISBN: 978 1 78346 365 7
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47384 779 8
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47384 790 3

The right of Ken Porter & Stephen Wynn to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Contents

Foreword

I AM SO PROUD and honoured to be the first Mayor of Basildon. The Larkin family business has served the community in Laindon for over eighty years and is sited opposite one of the oldest schools in our borough, Laindon Park Primary School which originated from St Nicholas Church. Many of those who are named on the Church War Memorial attended this school. Here is where Annie Elizabeth Larkin was the school cook back in the Forties when the school was often referred to as Donaldsons after the headmistress at the time, Miss Donaldson. I have been the Chair of Governors at Laindon Park for over thirty years enjoying every pupils success.

Our part of England (Laindon) made a large contribution to the Great War which sadly took the lives of so many brave men and women. The Laindon War Memorial has left a lasting testament to their courage. Ken Porter and Stephen Wynn deserve a huge thank you for their commitment, dedication and enthusiasm in compiling this book.

May I leave you with my special thoughts, dedicated to the grandfather I never knew, who died delivering water to his brave men in the trenches. I have tried to capture his sacrifice in this poem:

POPPIES

A white feather falls on the poppies below

But these symbolic flowers will never grow

A field of red where winds doth blow

Ceramic poppies are there for show

For me to remember a feather that fell

My thoughts return to a living hell

Soldiers in trenches, bullets and shells

Mud, death and sacrifice for a soldier to tell

A soldier, a young man so special to me

A father, a grandad, whom I never did see

A grave, a tear in a foreign shore

A hero like thousands, who were loved and adored

So buy a poppy to remember them all

Without their brave stance our country would fall

Our freedom, their valour, a time to reflect

Whatever we do we will never forget.

Mo Larkin

Authors

KEN PORTER was born in Laindon in 1944; his passion has always been sport and history. At school he took an active part in athletics and football then in his early teens cricket took over and became his lifes passion. Since retiring, history has taken precedence and, having lived in the area virtually all his life, his local knowledge is extensive. He became a leading enthusiast for the Basildon Heritage Group and Laindon and District Community Archive and gives talks to local societies. His enthusiasm for history inspires others to get involved and share their memories. His interest in the First World War stems from his maternal grandfather, James Frederick Pitts, who saw active service.

Ken has been married to Carol for forty-eight years. They have three children and five grandchildren.

STEPHEN WYNN has just retired having served with Essex Police as a constable for thirty years. He is married to Tanya and has two sons and a daughter.

His interest in history has been fuelled by the fact that both his grandfathers served in and survived the First World War, one with the Royal Irish Rifles, the other in the Merchant Navy, and his father was a member of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps during the Second World War. Both Stephens sons, Luke and Ross, were members of the armed forces, serving five tours of Afghanistan between 2008 and 2013. Both were injured. This led to his first book, Two Sons in a Warzone Afghanistan: The True Story of a Fathers Conflict published in October 2010. He has also written three crime thrillers.

Ken and Stephen have collaborated on a previous book published in August 2012, German POW Camp 266 Langdon Hills. It spent six weeks as the number one best-selling book in Waterstones, Basildon between March and April 2013.

Acknowledgements and Contributors

WRITING A BOOK of this nature requires a considerable amount of research and we could not have completed it without the help and co-operation of a large number of people and interested groups.

Our thanks must start with the individuals who have allowed us to write about their family experiences and reproduce their treasured photographs (see below). We hope we have rekindled their memories of their family heroes. We could not have produced the book without their stories, although we are aware there are many more out there just waiting to be unravelled.

We would also like to express our appreciation to those who helped us to verify information that we had sourced, members of the Essex Record Office and Basildon Heritage, in particular Jo Cullen and Eric Lamb, for access to their large catalogue of memories of local people taken in the 1970s; members of the Laindon and District Community Archive, in particular Denise Rowling, Sue Ranford and John Rugg; staff of Basildon Borough Council; Rod Cole of the Basildon Natural History Society; Chris Saltmarsh who has provided many postcards; Steve Newman; Karen Dennis; John Simpson, churchwarden of St Peters, Nevendon and Emma Thomas.

We have made every effort to contact the copyright holders of images and documents in this book. We apologise to anybody not properly acknowledged or whom we have not managed to trace.

Contributors

John Andrews, John Baker, Edna Baldes, Charlie Clarke, Janet Doughty, Ellen English, Albert French, Tony Hamilton, Roger Harris, Nina Humphrey, Edmund King, Gwen Lock, Peter Merten, Thomas Monk, Ivy Powell, Allen Seymour, Emma Thomas, Jan Watt, John Williams, Robbie Shields.

Introduction

WRITING THIS BOOK about Laindon and the surrounding district in the First World War was a labour of love for both Ken and Steve. Ken, because he was born in Laindon and has since spent most of his life living close by. Steve because he used to live but a mere stones throw away, and as a young boy, spent most weekends and those never ending long summer evenings, playing nearby in the woods and fields when everything he did seemed like a new adventure.

In 2012 they had their first book published about a German prisoner of war (PoW) camp which was sited in the field at the end of Dry Street, Langdon Hills where it meets the junction with the High Road.