OUR wartime subject matter prompts Colin Foster in Scalby, near Scarborough, to send in this splendid picture which says on the back of it that it is “the Home Guard Battalion, HQ Company, Bondgate, Darlington 1942”.
These, then, are the Bondgate Dad’s Army – which is rather cruel.
Colin says: “The only person I can identify is the young lady to the right of centre on the front row. She was then called Jennifer Berry and she held the rank of 'Signaller'. Her father ran a butcher's shop in Hollyhurst Road. She later married Ken Hoole, the well known railway historian and author. She trained as a teacher at Ripon College and concluded her career as headmistress of Filey C of E Infants School in Yorkshire. Ken Hoole also had the rank of 'Signalman' while serving with the Radio Security Service during the war.”
Mr Hoole, of course, is a legend among railway historians, and has the study centre at Darlington’s railway museum named after him (what would he think of that railway museum now being called “Head of Steam”?).
Can anyone recognise anyone else, or even give us a clue as to the location?
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