Names

Christmas Eve at the Front

An interesting letter has just been received by Mrs Packer, of Broadclyst, from her husband, Corpl Packer of A Company, 1st Battalion Devonshire Regiment, who is serving with the Expeditionary Force in Northern France. In the course of a letter he describes a remarkable incident which occurred on Christmas Eve between the British and German trenches.

The ‘courage and determination’ shown by two local men has been praised by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in announcing this week that their inscribed thanks on vellum are to be awarded to Dr Desmond Valentine and Mr John Pavitt.

The awards recognise the bravery shown by the two men when an injured seaman was taken off the ship Manchester Merit a few miles off the North Devon coast last January. At the time, Appledore branch secretary Mr Ivor Wickersham described it as ‘a hazardous operation carried out extremely well’.

Dr Desmond Valentine is retiring - 1964

At the end of this month, after 34 years in practice at Appledore, Dr Desmond S Valentine is retiring.

Intimation was given in last week’s issue of plans for patients and other friends to show their appreciation of his long, loyal service in a practical way.

In his retirement he and his wife will continue to live at Rock House on the corner of the Quay and where, 50 yards away, his motor yacht Little Bittern lays at her moorings. Fishing and sailing have been ‘Dr Desmond’s’ lifelong hobbies, as befits a son of Appledore, and his knowledge of the estuary is probably unmatched outside the professionals. Appropriately, for the past ten years he has been president of the local branch of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and he is also president of Appledore Regatta. In younger days he was a keen rugby footballer and he is a past president of Bideford RFC. Over the years he has taken a practical interest in many local causes, too numerous to mention in the confines of these notes. On Friday at a meeting of the Barnstaple and Bideford Port Authority it was announced that Dr Valentine was retiring from his post of Port MOH, a position he took over from his late father, Dr William Valentine, in 1934.

Like their father, who as a major in the RAMC, accompanied the 1/6th Devons overseas in 1914, both his sons, Col A W Valentine and Dr Desmond Valentine, served for years overseas in the last war, the first mentioned was awarded an immediate DSO while commanding the 2nd Devons in Sicily and was later made CBE, Dr Desmond also as a Colonel, was mentioned in despatches for RAMC services in Burma and the eastern frontier of India in 1944. Both brothers are Old Boys of Blundells. For about six months in 1944 Dr Valentine was in charge of the hospital receiving each night by air the sick and wounded of Major Gen Orde Wingate’s force operating behind the Japanese lines. Subsequently he was promoted to full Colonel and given charge of a 700 bed hospital and later appointed Assistant Director of Medical Services. He resumed his practice at Appledore, in which he had followed his father, early in 1946.

Estuary Interest in Sicily DSO Awards - Instow and Appledore Families 1943

Instow and Appledore are especially proud to hear of the gallantry and leadership in Sicily of two friends, both regular soldiers, who come from the twin towns of the estuary. Both have been awarded the DSO, in one case this being in the form of a bar to a previous award.

A bar to the DSO he received for the Commando raid on Vaagso, has been awarded to Lieut-Col J Durnford-Slater, of Instow, a son of the late Capt L Slater of the Royal Sussex Regiment, who lost his life early in the last war, and the late Mrs Durnford-Slater whose death occurred at Instow, where had lived for many years, nearly a month ago. Before the war, Lieut-Col Durnford-Slater, whose parent regiment is the Royal Artillery, had served in India and had also held for a while a gunner Territorial adjutancy near Falmouth. He has been in the Commando since their formation and his appointment as Lieut-Col made him the youngest in the Army. After being engaged in Commando operations in Europe he went to the Middle East and has been recently with the Eighth Army in Sicily. He has spent much of his time at Instow and played cricket for the North Devon Cricket Club and rugby football for Bideford. His elder brother, Commander C F Durnford-Slater, is in the Royal Navy. Lieut-Col A W Valentine, whose immediate award on the field of the DSO, the Bideford Gazette briefly announced last week, is a son of the late Dr W A Valentine of Appledore. He commanded a battalion of the Devons in Malta, where he served throughout the heavy air bombardment of that island. On the invasion of Sicily he took part with his battalion in the heavy hand to hand fighting there, and with a tommy gun at his hip led a company of the Devons. Lieut-Col Valentine already held the MBE.