Devoran Red Cross Detachment and Devoran Village Hall, 1939-45

Doubled membership for Cornish Red Cross and VADs [Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses] 

Western Morning News 2nd November 1938

Former WW1 Nurse or VAD, Miss M.P. Tyacke is mentioned amongst the guests of this meeting combining Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance volunteers, no doubt in preparation for future war in the months after the Munich Crisis of September 1938. The WW1 network of nurses, hospital staff and first aid volunteers was being rebuilt.  

“Colonel Hood said there 128 immobile members and 27 mobile (of whom 25 were nurses and two cooks) in the county at the end of September [1938].

He needed more volunteers for national emergency, cooks, chemists, dispensers, opticians, and masseuses, as well as women who had passed nursing and first aid tests.”

“Only six detachments exist in the county – Launceston, St. Austell, Newquay, Perranporth with St. Agnes, Truro and Camborne.

Several classes now being held, however, should  in time form the nucleus of new detachments. Truro  [with 80] looks as if need a second city detachment.

Feock has 40 members and Devoran W.I. 20 [members] …

“In the hall were nurses, volunteers, commandants who have kept detachments intact during peacetime … I spotted … Miss Tyacke … in the audience.”

Devoran Village Hall was the site of many Red Cross  training activities during wartime and postwar (organised postwar by Miss Audrey Webber?)

There was obviously an overlap of women between the Red Cross detachment and  the Devoran W.I. which used (and helped found) Devoran Village Hall. 

In the 1939 Register for Devoran (similar to a census),  several women who were former WW1 VADs and nurses like Miss Tyacke are listed as part of the civilian nursing reserve for wartime and ARP help. Worthy of another future blog post. 

Several more VAD names and Civilian Nursing Reserve women from Devoran village are mentioned in my churchyard blog post here: https://devoranwarmemorial.wordpress.com/2020/06/22/devoran-churchyard-headstones-connected-to-ww1-and-ww2/

Blog post by Mark Norris as part of DVH 100, 19 April 2024  

 

 

Devoran Village Hall 1943 ARP Civil Defence film showing on incendiary bombs and Prisoner of War POW fund

January 1943.  Miss M.P. Tyacke presided, when Mrs. E.T. Dillon (Hon. Sec.) reported that the proceeds from the recent gift stall in aid of the Prisoner of War fund realised £1 6 shillings and 6d.

An M.O.I [Ministry of Information] film dealing with “incendiary bombs” followed. The attendance included members of the WVS, Red Cross detachments, Home Guard and ARP personnel.

Devoran W.I. meeting as reported in local press, January 1943

Devoran also further supported Prisoners of War  through a ‘penny a week’ fund, which  totalled £5, 17 shillings and 8d for April 1943, as reported in the Western Morning News on 11 May 1943.

Blog posted by Mark Norris, DVH100 on 13 April 2024

Air Raid Precautions Lectures Devoran Village Hall Munich Crisis 1938

Devoran WI  information – they met in the Devoran Village Hall 

Miss M.P. Tyacke presided and Major H. Christie lectured on A.R.P in the home. Mesdames A.M. Pascoe and E.J. Turner were tea hostesses.

Western Morning News 19 October 1938  

Editor’s note: Mrs Turner was wife of Mr. E.J. Turner, the Devoran Council School Headteacher. 

A few weeks earlier Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had returned from his meeting with “Herr Hitler” during the Munich Crisis 30 September 1938 waving his “Peace in Our Time” piece of paper, having postponed the outbreak of World War Two as it turned out by only a year.

Discussions about Air Raid Precautions and Gas attack were taking place before Munich September 1938, as Major H. Christie of Newquay was talking at Wadebridge British Legion Hall in June 1938 –  

as reported in the Cornish Guardian, 9th June 1938.  

The content of the Wadebridge talk sounds the same as the Devoran Village Hall talk:

“Major Christie discussed the general outline of the A.R.P. schemes, and gave demonstrations with the three types of gas masks, viz. those for civilians, air [raid] wardens, and Service men respectively.” 

“He also showed how rooms in dwelling houses might be sealed , and how concreate bomb proof shelters could be made. Quite a number of questions were asked at the close of the talk, and these were ably answered by the speaker, who was warmly thanked for such an instructive address.”

As reported by Cornish Guardian, 9th June 1938.  

Major H.H.V. Christie of Newquay was noted as “one of the chief ARP experts in Cornwall” (in a press cutting entitled “Bombs which burn through iron / Fires fed by water” about incendiary bomb threat in the Cornish Guardian, 30 March 1939). Christie  would no doubt warrant a further future blog post about his wartime role and Cornish activities in preparation for WW2. 

Major Christie was also County Commandant of the Red Cross in Cornwall , which is how he would know Miss M.P. Tyacke, who was a former VAD nurse in WW1, see “National Service Red Cross Appeal for Blood Donors”, Cornish Guardian article 27 July 1939. 

However this 1938-1939 year gave the military and civil defence authorities time to organise for a possible war in Europe and air raids on Britain before Hitler and Nazi Germany finally invaded Poland in September 1939.  

Blog Post by Mark Norris, DVH100 Preparations, 13 April 2024