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Surviving by Magic

Monty Parking gave us a most informative talk about Fergus Anckorn, a survivor of a P.O.W. camp, entitled "Surviving by Magic".
Fergus Anckorn was born at South View House Dunton Green in 1918. At age 4 he was given a magic set by his mother and as a young boy would perform tricks at parties. By the time he was a teenager he was quite a skilled performer.
A major Branson saw his act and suggested he try slight of hand illusions.
This was so successful that by the age of 18, in 1936 he became the youngest member of the Magic Circle.
Encouraged by his father and brother, he took a course in Journalism but despite their efforts he preferred to work at Marley Tile Co. until the outbreak of war.

He enlisted in the Royal Artillery as a gunner, where he met artist Ronald Searle.
He became ill with a serious skin condition and spent time in Joyce Green hospital Dartford where he met his wife to be, Lucille; while still stationed in the UK he and Searle organised concert parties.
They performed in Liverpool before being posted to Nova Scotia, thence on to Cape Town & Singapore.

In Singapore he engaged with the Japanese & was shot in his right hand a & left leg. His condition was so serious that en route to a hospital camp he had to be operated on in a makeshift first aid port in a Post Office, where the surgeon prepared to amputate his hand.

Fortunately he was recognised as the magician seen in Liverpool & the surgeon decided against amputation (although he could not use the hand effectively for 5 years).

Angus returned to the front but had the misfortune to be in hospital where the Japanese came through bayoneting patients in their beds, of 76 in the ward only 4 survived.

A total of 200 staff & patients were killed that day.
Fergus was then interned with 15,000 men in Changhi barracks - nicknamed 'The Black hole of Changhi'.

Fergus lifted moral by entertaining the troops with his tricks & was also commanded to do shows for his captors.

He soon learned that since they considered him vermin, anything that he used in his act would be discarded & he was able to purloin many useful items.

In 1942 he was transported northwards to Malaya to start work on the Thai Burma railway.

He helped build the 2 bridges which featured in the film Bridge over the River Quai. At this time Fergus was posted as missing, but by a stroke of luck the Red Cross handed out postcards for them to fill in & send him & he was able with his knowledge of Pitman's shorthand, to send a message in code to his mother saying 'still smiling'. Months later this card was delivered & his mother recognised the coded message & replied in similar vein.

The Japanese dished out hard punishment for 'minor misdemeanours'. Fergus was severely burned with creosote & spent weeks in hospital camp because he was unable to work efficiently with his damaged hand. He was put to work there dressing & treating ulcerated wounds & amputations & preparing corpses for burial. Nevertheless he continued to entertain the troops, & his captors.

He was able to cobble together prosthetic limbs which many survivors preferred to use after the war because they were so light & comfortable. After a disastrous bombing raid by the allies in which 400 were injured & 76 killed, he helped level & mark out a football pitch which held the message POW so that further incoming allied aircraft could recognise the site.

After Hiroshima & the surrender of the Japanese the prisoners were sent to Rangoon for careful "fattening up" before being repatriated; upon his return to UK, Fergus married Lucille & they had 2 children.

He became a recluse & suffered nightmares for many years until in 2005 he revisited Singapore & this finally banished his demons. In 1951 he met again the surgeon who had operated on his hand previously, who offered to reconnect the nerve & Fergus made a complete recovery.

He returned to work at Marley Tile & lectured at West Kent College.

Now at 92 Fergus is the oldest member of the magic circle.
He says he feels no bitterness.
In all a most fascinating & poignant evening.

 

 

Shoreham and Deep Time

David Horsley gave a most interesting talk to the Society on 21 October on Joseph Prestwich, who lived at Darenth Hulme from 1869 to 1896. Prestwich was an amateur geologist who became Professor of Geology at Oxford, and whose researches and discoveries were hugely significant and influential in the controversial debate about the Antiquity of Man.

Prestwich's working life was spent in the wine business, but he devoted one hour before breakfast and two after work every day to his real passion, scientific research. He developed an interest in tertiary rocks, the main rock strata of south-eastern England, and his researches into geological succession convinced him that the earth was many thousands, even millions, of years older than currently believed, and that man had lived on the earth for aeons of time. The controversy surrounding his paper of 1859 on the Antiquity of Man, however, was trumped by that caused by Darwin's The Origin of the Species, published a few years later stating that Man was not descended from God but from an apelike ancestor.

Prestwich first came to Shoreham in 1853 when he bought 'a bare piece of chalk down with a topknot of wood' where he built Darenth Hulme, named after Hulme Hall, his ancestral seat near Manchester. In 1870 he married Grace, 20 years his junior, who became his amanuensis and willing slave, the role previously taken by his sister Civil. He retired from his City job at 60 with relief, and two years later was surprised to be appointed Professor of Geology at Oxford, a post he held for 13 years. He was greatly influenced by a new friend, Benjamin Harrison of Ightham, an amateur palaeontologist who had amassed a huge collection of fossils. Benjamin convinced Joseph that many of these were eoliths, manmade shaped tools of great age, and Joseph published Harrison's theories, which eventually were accepted by the scientific establishment.

Although these theories have been largely superseded by more recent geological research, David Horsley felt that the part Joseph Prestwich played in the growth of scientific knowledge should not be underestimated, both in his singlehanded discovery of the tertiary succession of rocks, and in his contribution to the public perception of deep time, the many millions of years during which the earth and man evolved.

 

CRICKET IN SHOREHAM
TALK BY JOHN DREW

 

At the meeting of 19 August John Drew of Cambridge, formerly of Farningham, spoke on ‘Raid Stopped Play’, the cricket match at Shoreham on 24 August 1940 when the visitors were Farningham.

According to the Kentish Times, attention began to wander ‘from the wicket to the horizon’ and the players could see ‘a terrific aerial battle some way to the north’.

Further digging revealed that at 15.00 hours the Luftwaffe began a massive raid on the Thames estuary and that Spitfires and Hurricanes were scrambled all day from Biggin Hill.

After much detective work Drew discovered that the scorebook survived (in private hands) and all the details of the match were revealed.

Farningham declared at 80 for five or six (not surprisingly the score keeping was a little shaky under the circumstances) when Gordon Wood, the skipper, then undefeated at the crease, departed with three of his team.

The Kentish Times said that they had to report for Home Guard duty.

Shoreham could still muster a nearly full team and overtook Farningham’s score with Jack Summerfield and Harry Saker the leading batsmen, as usual.

As the scorecard was read out the enthusiastic audience provided reminiscences of the Shoreham players, although no one had attended the match.

Remarkably Drew did find one eyewitness, the 93-year-old wife and sister of two of the Farningham cricketers, who recalled that some trees had been set alight by something falling from the sky.

Minutes in the Club archives reveal the four of the Shoreham regulars who had been selected for the match did not play, including two of the Dinnis brothers who would have given priority to war work on the farm in the month of the harvest.

Shoreham C.C. was not to play another match on the Mildmay ground until the week before V.E. day.

The Historical Society was very pleased to welcome some 30 visitors from Eynsford and Farningham.

 

THE FLEET AIR ARM

 

1909-1945 Richard Searle gave the Society a most interesting lecture on what is probably the youngest of the armed services.

It was formed in 1909 from a mixture of sailors and soldiers and their earliest aeroplanes were donated by sponsors and looked much like the original Wright Brothers machines.

The pictures and descriptions of the earliest efforts to take off or land on small decks on the top of merchant ships gave one a good idea of the courage of these early pioneers of the Fleet Air Arm.

The part played during the First World War of this fledgling service was fairly small and largely took place over land.

Between the wars progress was slow until the late 30's when the country realised that war was coming.

The realisation that air power was becoming more important spurred the government to produce more aircraft carriers a process that continued throughout the war.

By the end of the war nearly 100 carriers of various sorts, from one aeroplane catapult ships to mammoth aircraft carriers were in service.

The battle of Tarranto was described in some detail as it was probably the most important engagement of the war for the Fleet Air Arm and proved conclusively the value of the Service.

It was a most interesting talk, delivered with a verve that only comes with personal experience.