Rolls of Honour

Cambridge District Scout Archive

The Gilwell Rolls of Honour are incomplete.  The entries for both rolls are from some but not all Groups and clearly omit such notable deaths as the Nott brothers of the 13^th in WW1 and members of the University and Perse school and probably 60^th Leys school from WW2. The lists below can be updated, as can the Gilwell Rolls of Honour, with adequate proof.

See also New Entries: Rolls of Honour for the growing list on new names (now c 40)

Notes on Rolls of Honour

• Schools often only list pupils or ex pupils not members or ex members of staff
• Troop returns do not imply that they are complete or near complete. The 7th (WW2) is clearly missing several. The 12th can be assumed to be complete.
• Roll of Honour sometimes refers to all those who served thus 1st Cambridge Roll of Honour for 1914 – 1918 is 37
• In a post WW1 review it was estimated that 100,000 older Scouts and leaders joined the armed forces. 10% died. 580 Scouts attended DC Col Howards March’s funeral in 1915, when some had already joined. A large number of students swell these numbers. 50 may be a reasonable approximation for an overall total.

Notes on University Records

• The Great War is very well recorded in ‘The War list of Cambridge University 1914 – 1918’. Not infallible but very good, it records those who served in the armed forces and those who died.
• WW2 is very poorly recorded, many colleges lacking memorials, no central record having been compiled and names were not generally published in contemporary records. It was observed at the time that it was far harder to gather information ‘Owing to the diverse character of our current National Service’.

WW1

Gilwell Roll of Honour

• W GE Phillips             Naval Brigade            1^st Cambridge                        1915
• L Hills                          Private                       1^st Cambridge                       1915
• Stephen Ryan             Private                         17^th Cambridge (Catholic)     1916
• Sidney John Stone Cpt [Lance Sgt]          1^st Cambridge (Cherry Hinton) Col Howard Marsh’s Own     1917
• Arthur Curzon           Private                         1^st Cambridge                         1917
• William Keepin         2^nd Lt                           1^st Cambridge (Balsham)       1918
• Reginald Rupert Andrews Pte Whittlesford 1915
• James Creek Ptr Whittlesford 1916

Gilwell Rolls of Honour

Cambridge Archives  Other known deaths

• H.P. Nott                                                          13^th Cambridge                       27/4/1916
• L. C. Nott                     MC                              13^th Cambridge                       18/4/1917
• Tabour                                                             2^nd Cambridge
• King                                                                 2^nd Cambridge

            ‘2^nd (Newnham) A.S.M. Hullick’s brother has painted a beautiful memorial tablet to the two members who fell in the war (Tabor and King)’.             Reveille 1920

• H. S. Morton                                                    9^th Cambridge
• A. D. Hamer                                                    9^th Cambridge
• L. South                                                           9^th Cambridge
• D. Bright                                                          9^th Cambridge
• S. Metcalf                                                        9^th Cambridge

           ‘ A.S-M. H. Morton and S-M. A. D. Hamer (war); L. South, drowned in war service with D. Bright; S. Metcalf (war).  Our second Camp there in 1914 was with S-M A. D. HAMER of Queens’ (killed in the War, a week before the Armistice)’                From CT Wood history of 9th

• G K Savile                                                        5^th Cambridge ASM                 March 1915
• Hugh M Ferguson                                          5^th Cambridge SM      
• Molt                                                                13^th Cambridge

            ‘Scoutmaster Molt (who was killed in France) left a little endowment to St Phillips Troop’.       

The names given above have been readily identified from the archives of the time. They are included in the page on New Entries as they have or will be forwarded for inclusion. Tabor and King (2nd) have been probably identified. Molt (13th) has been a little more certainly identified, but the final link is missing. Newer discoveries which are not individually recorded as killed in the records of the time are also listed on that age.

Private L Hills Late 1st Cambridge Sea Scouts Killed in Action in Flanders with the 1st Battalion Cambridgeshire Regiment (Scout News, Cambridge Journal October 1915)

G W Phillips 1st Cambridge Died of wounds fighting with the Naval Brigade in Antwerp (Scout News, Cambridge Journal November 1915)

W F Keepin Possibly also 7th Cambridge where he was at school.

Injured

Less often mentioned are those who returned in poor health.  9^th Cambridge ‘now Mr. B. Snelson, whom we welcomed back from the war, has had a temporary break-down in health.’                                                                                               Reveille 1920

Fred Feary, 23^rd Cambridge 1919 – 1979, returned from the war with serious injuries (shattered knee)

‘Mr Loades, a Scouter from Ipswich pre war‘ who became SL of the 13th in 1931 ‘served in the RAMC was and is suffering from the war’. (R K Loades) from 13th log books. He stepped in at a point when the troop was without a SL and might have closed.

G E S Fursdon 1st Cambridge Was injured, returned for a few months then permanently out of action. He later worked in Recruiting. IWM holds letters in which he describes arranging a Dec 1914 ceasefire ‘to bury our dead and celebrate the season’. Named in ‘Our Scout Column’.

1939 – 1945

Gilwell Roll of Honour

• Peter Ankin                             Sgt Pilot           20               12^th Cambridge
• Charles Brackenbury             Captain            24                 1^st Cottenham
• Charles Cook                           Sgt Pilot           20                12^th Cambridge
• Donald Custerson                  Pilot Officer   25                   65^th Cambridge (St Sepulchres)
• Gunner/ Driver/ Operator                  22                   64^th Cambridgeshire
• H F Gigny         (Frank)         Sgt Pilot        22                    11^th & 23^rd Cambridge
• Paul Godfry                            Leading Aircraftsman         7^th Cambridge
• Francis Halliday                    Cpl                   21                  7^th Cambridge
• Frederick Harrold                 Pilot Officer    23                  7^th Cambridge
• Cyril Hoare                             Stoker            18                 Whittlesford  HMS Hood
• Leslie Jaggard                       Flight Sgt         20                   12^th Cambridge
• Thomas W Johnson                                        22                 12^th Cambridge
• Blythe Kempton – Werohia   RAF              23                  12^th Cambridge          

In November 1940 Cambridge District asked that any casualties be reported to the District Secretary who would inform ‘The Scouter’ and the County Secretary.

In December 1945 Imperial Scout Headquarters asked for information concerning War Service.  The Cambridge Group returns, but not the copies of the formal returns to Headquarters, remain in Cambridge District Scout Archives (see below).  At this date both the University 31st and the Perse 5^th declared they were unable to keep track of the large numbers of Scouts, Scouters and Rovers that had passed through their groups.  No returns were made from these groups.  Only in 1947 do any records relating to the 60th appear in The Scouter; none are seen at District level.

Groups with more parochial catchment areas retained local and informal lines of communication concerning members.  Groups whose membership and leaders remained in place during the war are more likely to have kept track of group members. Groups with larger proportions of older Scouts (not yet formally Senior Scouts) and Rovers are represented more frequently as are those whose members enrolled into the RAF.

The typed list (above) and the list from the roll of honour do not match the December 1945 Cambridge War Service census it possibly being an early draft and clearly an incomplete list.

Five later deaths mentioned by the 9^th have no names given nor does the one from the 26th. 23 are named below (and a Gunner/ Driver).

• 11^th        The one named is listed
• 12^th        All 7 named are listed            (note Jaggard also named by 9^th)
• 23^rd      All 4 named are listed
• 64^th      One named is listed
• 65^th      One named is listed
• 26^th      1 named but later record changed to 2 killed.  No name given
• 9^th        4 named, only one listed (that one shared with 12^th) but later record changed to 9 killed.  The later five names are not in the folder in the District Archives.

The two listed in the Roll of honour but not on the Cambridge list (Brackenbury and Hoare) are from an older District than was being collated in 1945/46.

Captain, EC/6998, 14/10th Baluchi Regiment, Indian Army, killed by the Japanese when, as Intelligence Officer, he was reconnoitering the Me Chaung crossing at Ruywa Road, Arakan, Burma, March 2 1945. age 24. Mentioned in Despatches. An undergraduate at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and connected with the Scout movement at Cottenham. Buried in Taukkyan War Cemetery, Myamnar. Plot 11. Row J. Grave 4.

Peter Luddington Bennett, Sub Lt on RMS Repulse, was listed in The Scouter in 1942 as a Rover Scout at Cambridge University. He is listed in the Gilwell Roll of Honour as a member of the 71st Croydon.

In The Scouter July 1946 a Cambridge list was published, among the first District based lists.  Hitherto they were generally sent in batches from groups or Districts but were not entered together.   They correspond largely to the ‘Cambridge list’ above and did not repeat previous entries.

American Cemetery Madingley

1946    An American Scout requested that flowers be laid on his twin brother’s grave in the American Military Cemetery on May 30^th (the American Remembrance Day)  This was done by Rovers of the 60^th and repeated the following year.

1947    The DC reported that the 60^th would arrange a wreath to be laid on the American Grave in accordance with the request made last year by an American Scout.

In 1948 the 60^th reported laying flowers at the grave of S/Sgt William Dilloway, Eagle Scout who ‘represents a 100 other US Scouts buried there’.            The Scouter July 1948              This is possibly a misreading and is rendered as ‘about a hundred’ in the Leys School magazine.  This is probably a significant underestimate.

2019 Restarted this year.

Memorials

Gillwell Rolls of Honour are still open to revision.  A number of new entries from Cambridge District were forwarded in 2019.

(See also ‘Collection of War Service details’) (Reveille 1920 was a single issue District newsletter published in 1920)

Those forwarded to Gilwell Rolls of Honour may be found in the ‘New Entries: Rolls of Honour’ page. Note Frederick Cecil Harrold 7th Cambridge Pilot Officer Died 28/9/1940 shot down by Bf 109. Buried as St Andrews Church Cherryhinton. The links on his individual page give a great deal of information.

JWR Archivist Apr 2019