Penny and Les Chilvers, 7th August 1954
Penny and Leslie Chilvers
Reproduced with the kind permission of Ron Penn (see footnote)
Florence Vera May Penn (known for most of her adult life by her nickname of Penny, was born at Battersea Park, London, on 11th December, 1919, just over a year after her father Mark had returned from his period as a prisoner of war in Germany. Due to a severe housing shortage Mark and his wife Vera were staying at the home of Mark’s parents (17 Coldstone Street, Bridge Road, Battersea) at the time of Penny’s birth. She was baptised in St. Stephen’s Church of England, Battersea.
At the age of three years Penny and her parents moved to 4 Chiswick Square, Burlington Lane, Chiswick, London and much of the family’s early life in Chiswick is recorded in the memoirs written by Penny as part of this book. Penny received most of her early religious instruction from her mother and at St. Nicholas Church, which was located just around the corner from Chiswick Square. Penny started her education at Hogarth Infants and Elementary Schools and was awarded a scholarship to Chiswick Central School, gaining Royal School of Arts certificates in English Literature and Intermediate and Geography’.
In 1951, Penny’s career took another track when she was appointed a Supervisor at Revelation Luggage Manufacturers where she met Leslie Chilvers whom she married on the 7th August 1954. After their marriage Penny once again changed jobs to become a receptionist at a small engineering company near Heathrow Airport. In addition to her work as a receptionist Penny also had the opportunity to learn the techniques of engineering production control and when she and Leslie moved to live at Basingstoke she was accepted as Chief Production Controller for Smith’s Aviation Instruments. After she had been in this position for two and a half years, Penny and Leslie moved to Frawley where Penny gained a position with a medium sized engineering company instigating, organising and running a new production control system. She remained in this position for nine years, leaving only when she became pregnant.
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Penny and Les Chilvers, 7th August 1954 |
Penny and Leslie later moved to Poole, Dorset to live and where their only child was born in 1961. Two years after Leslie’s death in 1995, Penny married John Macdonald. She died suddenly on 19th December, 2002.
Leslie Chilvers, the son of Herbert George Chilvers and Anne Elizabeth Chilvers (nee Tindall) was born at Fulham, London, on 4th December 1918. He was baptised into the Roman Catholic faith, but did not follow it. His paternal grandparents came from Essex and his maternal grandfather was an Irish soldier. Leslie was the youngest of four children born at about five year intervals. The children were Herbert, Reginald, Ivy and Leslie.
Leslie was called up for military service in 1940 and was drafted into the East Surrey Regiment. After only three weeks training he was sent to France. Following the complete abandonment of a large area by French troops Leslie was almost immediately involved in fighting a rearguard action in company with a number of other young similarly semi-trained, poorly armed raw recruits from his regiment. Together with men of the 51st Highland Division these young soldiers with only their rifles, a few Bren guns and very little ammunition were ordered to hold the mighty German Army Group B.
Spearheaded by General Kleist’s Panzar Division, the German Army struck from the World War I battleground of the Somme. Smashing through the Tenth French Army the Germans reached the Seine River west of Paris on June 9 and then turned westward to pin the IX French Corps, the British 51st Highland Division and the men of the East Surreys against the sea at Valery-en-Caux. These two groups of soldiers constituted one of the few British Expeditionary Force elements still fighting in France. An attempt was made to evacuate them by sea from the port of St. Valery-en-Caux in a similar manner to the evacuation at Dunkirk only 12 days earlier. Unfortunately, this proved to be a very difficult task although 3000 men were taken off. After some very fierce fighting, the small remaining group of 251 men from the East Surreys were taken prisoner on the 12th June, 1940, together with over 5000 men from the 51st Highland Division.
It is interesting to note that in September 1944, the town of St. Valery where Leslie was taken prisoner, was liberated by members of the 51st Highland Division and years later a pipe band tune called “The Heroes of St. Valery” was written for the 51st Division Pipe Band to commemorate the stand taken by the soldiers in that area in June 1940. However, it is very doubtful whether Leslie was aware of this piece of music and even if he did know about it, he would not have considered himself a hero; although this may very well have been the case.
Following his capture at St. Valery Leslie spent the next four years in a prisoner of war camp in Poland, but in 1944/45 he was force-marched ahead of the advancing allied forces over a mountain range for about one thousand miles. Many of Leslie’s comrades died during this march. Those who survived grubbed around in frozen fields for remnants of root crops and Leslie recalled eating a dog’s dinner found outside a farmhouse door because of starvation. For the rest of his life Leslie had scars on his fingers where tubes were inserted to draw off the fluid created by malnutrition in the prisoner of war camps.
Before being conscripted into the army Leslie had been employed as a trainee French Polisher with Lyons (the famous teashop company) but the position was not held open for him. Therefore, after his demobilisation he became a house painter and decorator. Due to the privations that he suffered during his period as a prisoner of war, Leslie had a very retiring personality and suffered from a considerable inferiority complex; both of which made it very difficult for him to mix with people. His wartime experiences also made it hard for Leslie to settle in one place for very long and it was only when he and Penny moved to Poole that he became more contented. However, Leslie was quite a talented artist, both in oil paints and with pencil and during his period as a prisoner of war he earned extra cigarettes, etc., by producing illustrated cards for the other prisoners to send home*. From about 1970, Leslie suffered a number of health problems including; coronary conditions, angina, vertigo and phlebitis and was eventually forced to retire from paid employment because of ill health. Although he was able to fill his first years of retirement with gardening, walking in the countryside etc, Leslie was later forced to curtail these pastimes because of his declining health. When a form of dementia was added to his problems causing him to become quite childlike and to become incontinent Leslie was admitted to Wareham Hospital where he passed away on 14th July 1995.
In 1979 he gave his brother-in-law Ron Penn two of his oil paintings to take back to his home in Sydney, Australia, where they are on permanent display.
Extracted from “PENNing a Family History” by Ronald M. Penn OAM JP
©Ronald M Penn (RMP Publications) 2007. Sydney, Australia.
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