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Introduction

During World War Two many schoolchildren were evacuated to West Cumberland. One of those evacuees was called Tom Coyne. He was evacuated to Whitehaven, Cumberland (now Cumbria) for about four years.

Tom witnessed an Allied plane crash close to the house he was living during the time he was an evacuee and has posted his own account of this incident to the 麻豆官网首页入口 鈥淧eople鈥檚 War鈥� website (Article Reference ID A4026836). I had also posted three separate accounts to the 鈥淧eople鈥檚 War鈥� website on behalf of other eyewitnesses to this plane crash (Article Reference IDs A3623465, A3856647 and A4117222). I then attempted to find out the facts of this particular plane crash, which led to me posting two further articles to the 鈥淧eople鈥檚 War鈥� website (Article Reference IDs A4411388 and A4638819).

In August 2005, Tom contacted me and said that he was about to revisit Whitehaven with his grandson Chris Coyne. Tom asked if I could help him clarify some things about the plane crash site and a few other things about his time as an evacuee. I was happy to accompany them to some of the places Tom remembered from his childhood. I also listened to some of Tom鈥檚 memories of the war years. This article is an account of Tom鈥檚 visit, 6O years after the end of World War Two.

Evacuees from Newcastle-upon-Tyne

I met Tom and Chris at their Guest House, Woodhouse Mansion. It is the former home of John Wordsworth, the uncle of the poet William Wordsworth and William's sister, the diarist Dorothy Wordsworth. Woodhouse Mansion is approximately two minutes drive to the house on Ennerdale Terrace where Tom and his brother Bob were evacuated to during the war. Tom said the couple that took them in were called Jack and Elizabeth Finnegan. Mr and Mrs Finnegan's house was at the bottom end of Ennerdale Terrace, Whitehaven. It is on the western side of Whitehaven, not far from the cliffs of St Bees Head.

Tom arrived in Whitehaven wearing a tag on his coat. There is a bus stopped at the bottom end of Ennerdale Terrace. Tom got out of the bus with his brother Bob and they learned they were stay with Mr and Mrs Finnegan. Tom鈥檚 brother Bob is about 2陆 years older. Bob was evacuated for about a year, until 1941, and then went back home. Tom mentioned that some years ago he had been trying to work out exactly how long he had been evacuated. It turned out it had been about four years. Tom told me he had a younger brother called Owen, born 1938, and a younger sister called Geraldine, born in 1940. Neither Owen nor Geraldine were evacuated from Newcastle.

During the time he was staying in West Cumberland during the war, Tom travelled back to Newcastle a couple of times to visit his mother. Although he was only about 7 or 8 years old at the time, Tom had made these return journeys to Newcastle unaccompanied! Tom remarked that you wouldn't let a young child travel on their own like that 60 years after the war, but it didn't seem unusual during the war.

Jack Finnegan worked at the Smith Brothers paper printing firm in the town. (NB 鈥� Smith Brothers made a variety of items like food wrappers, medicinal bags etc). Tom thought Mr and Mrs Finnegan had previously lived in the Barrow-in-Furness area, then in North Lancashire but now in South Cumbria. While he was in Whitehaven, Tom went for a while to St Mary鈥檚 RC School, which is situated at the junction of Ennerdale Terrace and High Road. They then transferred to St Begh鈥檚 RC School on Coach Road, down a big hill from Ennerdale Terrace towards the town centre. I drove Tom to both these schools so he could have a look at them from the outside. Both schools have been extensively modernised in recent years, and at St Begh's School the buildings have been completely replaced. But Tom was able to show his grandson Chris where he had attended school during the war.

Tom said that he remembered Mr and Mrs Finnegan were related to a family who lived in Whitehaven with the name by the name of 'Turner'. He remembered one of the boys had went away to be a Catholic priest, but had not completed the course and had returned home. Tom also asked if I perhaps knew where Mr and Mrs Finnegan were buried at. As I did not know Mr and Mrs Finnegan, or the Turner family that Tom had mentioned, I was unable to help Tom with this during his visit.

A few days after Tom returned home, I met Joan Toner who was one of the eyewitnesses to the Arrowthwaite plane crash whose account I had previously posted to the 麻豆官网首页入口 "People's War" website. It turned out that Mr and Mrs Finnegan were in fact the uncle and aunt of her husband Joe Toner! Joe's eldest brother had went away to be a priest, but had come back home, eventually married and went to live in Scotland. Joe and Joan also knew where Mr and Mrs Finnegan were buried. So, it turned out I knew relatives of Mr and Mrs Finnegan after all! The 'Turner' family Tom remembered were actually the 'Toner' family!

Learning about wartime events

All five of the Allied airmen whose Avro Anson training plane crashed on 'The Brows' at Arrowthwaite, Kells were unfortunately killed. Tom had read the accounts I had written before he had made this visit to Whitehaven. As the information is contained in the previous accounts I have written and posted to the 鈥淧eople鈥檚 War" website I will merely list the names of the five airmen here: Flying Officer H.J. O'Gara, Sergeant C. Johnson, Sergeant T. Inman, Sergeant V.J. Dunnigan and Sergeant R.H. Murphy.

One of my uncles, John McCrickett, had witnessed the same air crash as Tom on 14 October 1943. In fact, John had been walking home from St Begh's School up the 'Ginns to Kells Road' that leads up to the bottom of Ennerdale Terrace when the crash happened. Although Tom and John did not know each other during the war years, nevertheless they both remembered a lot of the same people, places and events. So, I took John, Tom and Tom's grandson next to the present day 'Brewers Arms' at Arrowthwaite, Kells, just above where I understand most of the fuselage, engine and the airmen were found.

Since the war trees have been planted on the crash site, so there is no real evidence that there ever was a plane crash. However, Tom was able to show his grandson Chris where the crash took place. I was able to show Tom the direction from where I understand the aircraft had come from before crashing. I had heard the aircraft had taken off from RAF Millom (Haverigg) about 30 miles to the south and it was likely to have been heading back there when it crashed. A little later, I took Tom, Chris and John to St Bees where they had a better view of the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man and towards Black Combe a fell (mountain) just to the north of Millom.

Tom told me he had often tried to remember what had actually happened to the aeroplane and the brave airmen who lost their lives. Until our recent discussion via the 麻豆官网首页入口 "People's War" project, Tom had even wondered exactly when the crash had taken place. At last, 60 years after the end of the war, Tom had been able to find out some of the details of one of the most significant events he remembered about the war years and show his grandson Chris the actual place where it had happened.

A little later, I took Tom and Chris to the Cumbria County Archives Office in Whitehaven so that Tom could see for himself some of the source documents that I had used to find out the details of the crash. This included a short account by the former Secretary / Manager of the local newspaper in 1943, Mr J.R. Williams. Mr Williams had visited the site within minutes of the crash with a Spitfire 鈥楢ce鈥� by the name of Flight Lieutenant D.M. Crook DFC who, coincidentally, happened to be visiting West Cumberland on the day of the air crash.

One of the articles I showed Tom and Chris was the 1943 local newspaper account of Flight Lieutenant Crook's goodwill visit that totally omitted any reference to the air crash. In taking Tom to the Archives Office, I hoped that it might help Tom remember a little more about one of his wartime memories.

Tom Coyne Senior

Another place I took Tom and Chris to see was St Nicholas Church and Gardens in Whitehaven town centre. I showed Tom the World War Two Memorial inside the Church Tower, commemorating some of those who died during the war. Some of those listed on the Memorial died in the Merchant Navy. St Nicholas鈥� Church Tower in which the WW2 Memorial is situated is now used as a caf茅. Over a cup of coffee, Tom told me a little about where he had lived in the North East of England before being evacuated, and about his father, Tom Coyne (Senior).

Tom was born at Shieldfield in in 1935. His family had first moved to the Walker district of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and later the Tyne Dock area of South Shields. Tom (Senior) served in the Merchant Navy as a Greaser, but he died in 1940, not long after Tom and his brother Bob had been evacuated to West Cumberland. Before Tom and Bob had been evacuated, Tom said he can remember his Dad arriving back home from the Caribbean one day with a bunch of bananas, a record player and a map he had bought. These were about the last bananas Tom saw until after the war.

Because his Dad died while he was evacuated, Tom had only found out what had happened many years later, when he read up about what happened. In fact, there were some differences in the details about what exactly had happened in the articles Tom had read. Tom definitely knew his Dad was on board the M.V. Neptunian owned by 'William Souters' (the 'Sheaf Line鈥�) of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. From what Tom had been able to find out from a book, the M.V. Neptunian had sailed down to the Caribbean in August 1940 and then sailed north to Halifax, Nova Scotia, picking up a convoy to cross the North Atlantic and back to the British Isles. Unfortunately, the 'Neptunian' was torpedoed. All the crew were lost, including Tom (Senior). Tom had heard it was supposed to have been a famous U-Boat 'Ace' who had been Captain of the 'U-Boat' that had torpedoed the MV Neptunian. Tom (Senior) never saw his daughter Geraldine, born in May 1940, before he died as he was already away at sea on what was to be his final voyage.

Tom said he couldn't remember anybody actually telling him that his father was lost at sea and later on, that he had been posted as presumed dead. The only way Tom had found out his father had died was when he found a letter lying around from his mother to Mrs Finnegan telling her that Tom's Dad had been killed. So, living away from home during the war, his father's death had not really had much impact until some years later. Then, after the war, when Tom had returned to the North East, his first job at the age of 14 was in the Merchant Navy the same as his Dad.

After listening to Tom's account of his father, I checked the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records and found the citation for Thomas Coyne (Senior), husband of Isabella Coyne of Tyne Dock, South Shields. According to the CWGC, Thomas Coyne died at the age of 34 on 7 September 1940. He is commemorated on Panel 72 of the Tower Hill Memorial, London. It is situated near the Tower of London and is the official Memorial commemorating men and women of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets who died in both World Wars and who have no known grave.

By coincidence, I had recently consulted an official reference book accompanying an Imperial War Museum exhibition called 'Spitfire Summer' by Malcolm Brown to try and learn more about Flight Lieutenant D.M. Crook DFC. As mentioned above, Flight Lieutenant Crook happened to be in Whitehaven on 14 October 1943 and was one of the first people to visit the plane crash site at Arrowthawaite, Kells, the same crash that that Tom had witnessed when he was a young evacuee. There was a short reference about the then Pilot Officer Crook in 1940, which I had previously mentioned to Tom.

After listening to Tom's account about his father's vessel, I remembered that there was another section in 'Spitfire Summer' where a German submarine 'Ace' called G眉nther Prien was mentioned (page 151). I did a little research about G眉nther Prien and found he was Captain of the German submarine U-47 in 1940 and this was in fact the submarine that torpedoed the M.V. Neptunian. I have written a separate article about this.

Some of the children on Ennerdale Terrace during the war

Tom mentioned some of the people he remembered during the time he was an evacuee. Mainly, these were families who lived on the street where he lived during the war, Ennerdale Terrace, including those who were fellow evacuees. As I was born some years after the war, I did not recognise any of the names that Tom mentioned. Two of those Tom mentioned he remembered from the war years were 'Morton Irving', who was in a wheelchair, and 'Bill Conlin', who came to be adopted by the family he was stopping with and then became 'Bill Curnow'. Tom said he also remembered Maureen Curnow, the daughter of the family Bill Conlin had been billeted with.

It turned out I was in fact acquainted with Maureen Curnow, and who is now Mrs Maureen Cottier. When I realised this I contacted Maureen and she told me that she remembered the evacuees who lived on Ennerdale Terrace during the war, including Tom and his brother Robert! All of the evacuees who arrived at Ennerdale Terrace were boys, the girls went elsewhere. Unfortunately, by this time Tom and Chris had returned back home to South Shields but Maureen kindly related some of her own memories to me about the evacuees on Ennerdale Terrace.

Maureen told me that her parents had adopted her brother Billy at the end of the war because both of Billy's parents had died during the war years. Billy had another brother and sister, and they had been sent to separate orphanages at the end of the war, in Prudhoe and Darlington. Maureen's mother had eventually managed to trace Billy's brother and sister so that he could write to them.

The lad who was in the wheelchair was called Gordon Irving and all the other lads used to push his wheelchair up and down Ennerdale Terrace. On one occasion a lot of the lads went off on bicycles and took Gordon with them in the wheelchair. Another lad Maureen remembers from the war was Paul Costello.

Maureen remembers the time the aeroplane crashed on 'The Brows' in October 1943. Her father was going to take her to the matin茅e showing at the pictures. When the plane crashed on 'The Brows' the trip to the pictures got cancelled and there were a lot of people coming up from the town centre all evening.

Conclusion

I would like to thank Tom, Maureen, John and Joan for sharing some of their wartime memories enabling me to write this article. Hopefully, revisiting some of the places he remembers from World War Two has helped Tom pass on some of his memories to his grandson Chris. Tom was just one of the many evacuees who lived in the towns and villages of West Cumberland during the war years. It was an experience that Tom has never forgotten.

Among the World War Two memorials in Whitehaven that I showed Tom and Chris was a Memorial Bench in St Nicholas' Church Gardens donated in thanksgiving tot he town by childhood evacuees from Heaton Grammar School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. At the time of writing this article there is no memorial in the town to the five airmen who lost their lives in the 1943 plane crash that Tom witnessed.

Tom's own father is commemorated at the Tower Hill Memorial in London. His name is but one of almost 24000 seamen who died during World War Two and have no known grave. I hope this article contributes to a better understanding about some aspects about life for evacuees during in World War Two.

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