Thursday 6th June 2024 marks 80 years since D-Day, the largest seaborne invasion in history, and the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe.

Cam Parish Council marked the anniversary with a beacon lighting at the top of Cam Peak.

The family of WW2 veteran Dennis Tocknell lit the flame in honour of their beloved husband, father and grandfather, whose story can be found below.

REME Gold Beach Veteran Dennis Tocknell

22 October 1924 – 12 May 2023

Dennis Tocknell was working at RA Listers and just weeks away from completing his engineering studies at night school when he was called up to the army in April 1943, aged 18. He was recruited to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) because of his maths and engineering skills. He landed at Gold Beach before seeing action in Arras and beyond for the remainder of his service. Dennis was demobbed in 1947.

Born in Lower Cam on 22 October 1924, Dennis chatted to his family about military life during the war and they made a written account of his words so that his family, and others, can share some of the experiences of a young man in active service, a long way from home, during World War II. The following are some of the words of Dennis Tocknell.

"One of the things that stood out before we went across in the invasion was the uncertainty of wondering what was going to happen, how would I ever come back? "

"After the invasion started, we moved down to Gosport to wait to go across. We were only down there one or two days, loaded onto the tank landing craft and then we went across. I've never seen such a mass of ships in all my life. Because of our big vehicles we had had to wait for the Mulberry Harbour to be built, we had to drive across a pontoon of all small boats linked together with a roadway on top and then across onto the beach."

"We were issued with our French money before we went and when we got across to Normandy we had white bread. We never had white bread in Britain at that time, the bread we had was a dirty light brown colour because that was how the rationing bread was. We went back to the lovely old white bread that we used to have before the war. That was one of the treats."

Dennis witnessed the trauma and uncertainties of war, as well as the reality for the local French.

"When we were in Arras some shocking things had gone on, which I wouldn't like to record.¨

¨We had a pioneer unit that was seconded to our workshop. They were billeted alongside us, spread out among the unit for sleeping accommodation, and the tank crew that had been badly shocked during the Beachhead invasion. I can remember night-time up in the billet there, a horrible place, and some of them would scream out in their sleep because of their experiences, and we would have to get the MO to give them a morphine injection to calm them down. It was terrible to see and all you could do was try your best to help them."

"Another gruesome thing relative to Arras that stuck with me for a long, long time, was after we had been in Arras for one or two weeks, and the French people started to come up to reclaim their dead. They opened up the moats etc and you could smell the stench for miles, all over Arras. It was horrible, quite horrible."

"It was terrible to see the displaced bombed-out people in Arras. They had nothing, absolutely nothing at all, people living in bits of a floor of a house two or three storeys up, and children wandering the streets who had no parents. It was a very depressing, terrible thing, I can see it now."

Dennis' army life also took him to the base workshop at Vilvoorde, just outside Brussels, where William Tyndale was executed in 1536. He said: "We were billeted in Vilvoorde in a hat factory, walking down through the town after a few days, I noticed a statue, like Tyndale's monument, in the middle of town. That is where William Tyndale, whose Bible was in the Nibley monument, fled when he was persecuted and that was where he died."

"I enjoyed my time in Brussels. There was a huge reclamation park adjacent to the railway sidings at Vilvoorde, and everything there was badly scrapped vehicles. The factory was run on a line basis, the vehicles were completely taken apart and we had a line that did all carburettors, a line that did all gearboxes, a line that did steering boxes, diesel pumps etc, every conceivable component was reconditioned, and all put back into service. It was very interesting, very well thought out engineering at its top level. It was a pre-runner to the way components were produced after the war."

While based in Vilvoorde, Dennis, who was a keen runner, was selected to run for the British low countries at the Hanomag stadium in Germany.

"This team was made up of three of us, one from Paris and the other from the Belgium Special Air Services (SAS), the three of us went to Germany. It was put up on the notice board saying my unit was honoured that I was representing British Troops low countries."

"To train for the race I had to go each day onto the racecourse in Brussels. I was given a permanent pass for Brussels, which was quite a thing at that time, and I used to go out each day into the town and buy things for the unit. During that period of time, I knew Brussels like the back of my hand."

"We went to the Hanomag stadium in Hannover for the race which was broadcast on the radio, and we won the team prize. It was presented by Montgommery – that was the height of my athletic career. Gailly, the SAS chap, won the race and went on to place 3^rd at the post war Olympics".

Dennis loved his running and also won the demanding local Dursley Dozen running race.

"From Brussels I was posted to a light detachment of REME at Montgomery's HQ at Baden Oysen in Germany, only about a dozen of us attached to the signal unit. The trouble with all these moves, I was always on my own having to make new acquaintances, thrown into a unit or with a group of people you all had to get used to, some of them good and some of them not so good."

"In the workshop I had a very good experience, the ride of my life really, in a Mercedes car. Brigadier General McCreedy had come into the workshop one day with his Mercedes. He had trouble with it, he could get to a certain speed, and it would cut, or he couldn't get it to go any better. This was a vehicle that originally belonged to one of the SS senior officers. He was going to go down to Paris and he wanted it fixing, and he understood that I was quite good on carburettors. I had a look at it, it was a twin carb and the float in one of them was punctured and consequently was partly full of petrol and wouldn't lift correctly, and when it got up to a certain speed it damped it down. So, I got the float out, dried it out, resealed it, soldered it and put it back in. I then took it out on a test drive on the autobahn, I did nearly 100-miles-an-hour, which in those days was quite something. I had never done anything like it before – quite an experience. He went down to Paris, he came back and, to be fair, he came into the workshop and congratulated me on how good a job I had done. I was very pleased with that."

Dennis met his future wife, Renee, during training in Failsworth, Manchester and they were married in 1946 on his last wartime leave from Germany. They went on to have five children and as well as living in Cam and Dursley, Dennis and Renee spent time living in Manchester and Malta.

Dennis worked in engineering and manufacturing all his working life, and his wartime experiences stayed with him, the good and the bad. "It just makes you wonder what the world is all about," he said.

Dennis Tocknell was 98 years old when he died on 12 May 2023.

Cam at War

War is unpleasant when those who fight for their country do not return or suffer mental or physical scarring. However, War does unite communities, encouraging them to forget personal and local differences.

The Second World War (1939-45)

In late Summer 1939, at the time of the phoney war, the local Territorial Army was mobilised. The 5^th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment was sent to Belgium and France to join the British expeditionary forces. In the retreat to the beaches of Dunkirk some were wounded or killed, whilst others were captured and held as prisoners of war for six years. Those that came home were only to return again to the beaches of Normandy in June 1944.

All local industries worked to produce materials for the war effort. Extra labour was brought in from outside the area, to replace the men and women who volunteered for their country. Even very small employers, like Fibre Arts, were involved in the war effort by making munitions boxes and boxes for Lister's engine parts.

Local Defence Volunteers

The Local Defence Volunteers, later to become "The Home Guard" (referred to by some as the "Look, Duck and Vanish" guard), were formed in Cam and Dursley in 1940. The area commander of the 8^th Gloucester Battalion of the Local Defence Volunteers was Brigadier General John Vaughan Campbell VC DSO. He was known as the "Tallyho VC" due to the fact that he went over the top of the trenches as a Lieutenant Colonel in the First World War blowing his hunting horn.

Cam National Fire Service

At the beginning of the 2^nd World War each parish had its own fire watch team, but later on these small teams were amalgamated into larger ones. The Slimbridge men joined those of Cam and used Cam Mill as a base. The section was manned every night, with the men being paid1/6d (7.5p) for an 8pm to 6am shift. Out of this payment they were charged 1/- (5p) for supper and their duties were to watch for fires caused by German incendiary bombs. They were called out by Listers siren or by telephone and, if necessary, dashed off to anywhere that was attacked with incendiary bombs or fires.

We must not forget the ladies of Cam who, while their men were away fighting, were not sitting idle. Some joined the services and many who stayed at home did their bit for the war effort. Some went into one of the four Mills or worked at R.A.Lister, some worked on the land and others, including the WI, spent their time canning fruit and jam in the Memorial Hall with hand operated canning machines that were supplied by the Americans.

Spitfire Appeal

In August 1940, at the time of the Battle of Britain, Wotton-under-Edge and Stroud had set up fund-raising schemes to buy a new state-of-the-art Spitfire for the Royal Air Force. £5,000 was sufficient to pay for a Spitfire, whereas today's aircraft cost several millions of pounds. So local rivalry set in as the local people wanted to show that they were as patriotic and thrifty as their neighbours. Mr (later Sir) Percy Lister called a meeting on one Saturday in August in Stinchcombe Village Hall and launched the Spitfire appeal fund to cover the neighbouring parishes including Cam, Coaley, Dursley, Nympsfield, Slimbridge, Stinchcombe and Uley. The response to the appeal was astounding and in just four days after the lauch in Stinchcombe Hall, on a second meeting in a crowded Dursley Town Hall, an impressive £823 had already been pledged. R.A.Lister gave £200 and pledged to give an additional £200 for every £800 raised by the local community. At a second meeting a total of £1,600 was pledged, which included £250 from the Workman Bros, Draycott Mills, and Cam Mills promised to pay double any money raised by their workforce. At this meeting a general committee was formed with representatives from every parish involved. Schools, shops, banks, public houses etc were also involved in the appeal. When the committee met five days later Mr Hobbs the Treasurer announced that the fund then stood at £2,247-13s-10d. The appeal had been a resounding success and on 15 October a cheque to the value of £6,472-13s-9d was sent to Lord Beaver-Brook, Minister of Aircraft Production.

So a Spitfire was bought with money collected locally, proving that communities can work and pull together to provide help when it is needed. The appeal was so successful that the Dursley Gazette held a humorous verse competition and asked for people to send in their feelings in words. The winner was Mrs Wise of Kingshill Road who wrote:

There was a young lady of Dursley, who gave to this fund every Thursday,

If others each day, were to give in this way, then Churchill could say, "Nought deters me!"

These kind of appeals were held all over the country, not only for aeroplanes but for ships as well. It only made a small difference in terms of building the war machine, but it made a huge difference to the morale of the people who thought they were doing their bit for victory. And the people of Cam can hold their heads high and say, "We did our bit".

For children the war years were a time of excitement and adventure, with all the military activities going on all around them and seeing things they had never seen before. Air-raid shelters were built, trenches were laid over Stinchcombe Hill to prevent planes landing there in the event of an airborne invasion and there were bomb craters around Coaley Junction area, where the Luftwaffe had missed the station by a few hundred yards. But to the children the glamour and excitement was in the air, plane spotting and arguing whether it was a Hurricane Spitfire, Heinkel, Messerschmitt or Focker. Crashed aircraft, although tragic, were another source of great excitement for children.

An interesting event happened at Springfield Woodfields on 16 April 1941 when Flt Sergeant Gordon Edward Ffitch was flying an Airspeed Oxford trainer. He had more than 60 hours solo flying experience and took off from an airfield at Brize Norton, Nr Oxford, at about 4pm with instructions to fly within a 10-mile radius of the airfield. The RAF could give no explanation as to why he was in the vicinity of Cam. Flying low over the houses at Woodfields, an eyewitness said that as the plane flew low he saw one of the wheels hanging down, the plan dived and climbed, then disappeared towards Gloucester. The plane returned and came back even lower and as the plane did a high-speed power dive it roared down and hit some electric cables and cashed into the house of Mr and Mrs Gazzard, cutting the house clean off to its eaves. The aircraft wreckage finished up by the windmill in Springfield. Mr and Mrs Gazzard were unhurt but covered in dust and suffering from shock. The pilot was less fortunate. He was decapitated and his flying boots were found on the roof of the house next door. Crash experts said that this was a common thing to happen in this kind of accident. At the inquest at Dursley Courthouse on 19 April 1941 it transpired that the pilot's sister (who worked at the council offices at Kingshill) was living in the Bungalow (Greystones) next door to the house that was struck by the plane. The coroner's verdict was accidental death whilst carrying out a stunt for the benefit of his sister.

Many people have vivid memories of the morning of 6 June 1944 when the sky was filled with the noise of aircraft pulling Gliders filled with allied troops. They were all heading towards Normandy in France because this was D-Day; the start of the largest military operation the world had ever seen. Operation "Overlord", the beginning of victory over Germany. Again on the morning of Sunday 17 September 1944 another massed air armada of Aircraft with Gliders was seen: this time it was the ill-fated operation "Market Garden" at Arnhem.

Lock your Wives and Daughters away, The Yanks are Coming!

A word must be said about our American allies. We have all heard what our envious servicemen used to say about them: "Over paid, Over Sexed and Over Here". On a cold wet November night in 1943 the Americans arrived at Dursley station, and what a change they were to make to the area. At that time Britain was fighting a rear-guard campaign with very little equipment after losing most of it at Dunkirk. The German U Boats were putting a strangle-hold on our shipping, preventing them from making deliveries of vital war and food supplies. Many goods were therefore hard to come by. The American GIs had plenty of money and attracted girls quickly. It is understandable as the American's were never short of money, cigarettes, chocolate, silk stockings, candy (sweets and chocolate) and a variety of foodstuffs that the local girls had never seen before. In 1942 when America entered the war after the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the American uniform became as popular as the British uniform.

Three American units were based in Dursley. The 41^st Evacuation Hospital was at Highfields School and The Rangers House, Woodmancote. The 67^th were in Long Street YMCA with 40 beds tented and a supply unit was in the Cinema car park at Kingshill. Every night it was possible to see an American party march up Kingshill Road with flags flying to change the guard at the Regal Cinema. In 1943 American combat troops became more evident in the locality in the build up to D-Day. Then, a few days before 6 June 1944 they all left suddenly. In retrospect it could be said that they came, they saw, they conquered some hearts and left their mark in several ways!

After the war was over and the Yanks had gone, it was time to welcome home our heroes. All local committees got together for a victory celebration, with street parties and welcome home dinners for ex-servicemen. The last dinner was held in January 1947 during what was to be the coldest winter of the twentieth century.

Roll of honour

In memory of those who gave their lives in the service of their country in two world wars.

1914-1918

Victor Alder, Gregory Allen, Pierce Allen, Albert Ball, Oscar Biddell, Stephen Billett, Cyril Bridges, Walter Browning, William Butcher, Edgar Butcher, Charles Coopey, Frank Coopey, Reginald Cross, Frank Curtis, Percival Davis, John Day, Ivor French, Frank Gapper, Charles Giles, Frederick Greenway, Ralph Hill, William Ireland, Arthur Keep, Edgar Keep, Gilbert Liddiard, Frederick Medcroft, Cyril Millman, Gilbert Morgan, William Paul, Herbert Poole, Frederick Reeves, James Reeves, Francis Roberts, Alfred Smith, Frank Smith, Percival Smith, Leo Sparrow, Alec Taylor, Reginal Terry, Archibald Thornhill, Orris Watts, Rex Wise, William Whitfield, Elijah Woodward, Handel Workman, Thomas Workman, Richard Worthington.

1939-1945

Ivy Sparrow, Harry Bean, Ernest Beard, Eric Butler, John Cowley, George Gabb, James Neal, Edgar Nolder, Kenneth Polson, Roland Price, Henry Tilling, Dudley Trotman, William Trotman, Harry Weeks, Richard Weeks.

"Admirals all, they said this day, The Echos are ringing still.

Admirals all they went their way, to the havens under the hill.

But they left us a kingdom none can take, The realm of the circling sea,

To be ruled by the rightful sons of Blake. And it's Rodney's yet to be."

Admirals All, Newbolt.