The Blandford Express

Known as the ‘ Victoria Cross Pigeon’ , the heroic last flight of carrier pigeon 2709 is remembered in the Royal Signals Museum at Blandford Camp. During World War I, the British Army used pigeons to carry messages. A miniature container would be attached to a bird’s foot in which a note with a message would be put. As pigeons can fly quite fast, the message could be delivered quite quickly. A bizarre feature of the time was the mobile pigeon loft. These were initially horse drawn but later London buses were converted into pigeon lofts. Quite a strange sight they were on the Western Front and some change from their previous role in the streets of London. Each vehicle could carry 60 to 75 birds in specially made coops on the upper deck with feed, stores and an office below. In October 1917, pigeon 2709 was given an important message to deliver from the Passchendaele front-line to the Divisional Headquarters. It left from the Menin Road area at around 1.30pm on the 4 th October 1917...

  Twenty-year-old Scottish seaman, Robert Banks (right) from Greenock arrived at Blandford Station in December 1914. The young recruit slowly made his way up the muddy unmade track connecting the town with the newly opened Blandford Naval Camp. Upon the outbreak of World War I, he had volunteered with thousands of others to join the Royal Navy. This meant leaving his marine engineering job in Glasgow’s River Clyde shipyards. Robert Banks was joining the Anson Battalion of the newly formed Royal Naval Division. Another recruit was his long standing pal, Henry Short (left) who was a trumpeter.  As a break from training, the Mayor of Lyme Regis, Alban Woodruffe invited the Battalion to spend time at the seaside in early February 1915. Local resident, Mrs Emmett invited Robert to stay with her. Before leaving Lyme Regis, the Mayor gave the Battalion this message: ‘We hope you will take away pleasant memories of your short visit here and we wish you God-speed and all good luck.’ ...

  Rupert Brooke was both a soldier and a poet who wrote one of his most famous poems the Soldier when he was stationed at Blandford Camp during World War I. Then something of a celebrity, he was known for his boyish good looks and was once described as the ‘handsomest young man in England.’ He was also a friend of Winston Churchill and the then Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. At Blandford Camp, Rupert Brooke was a member of the Hood Battalion of the Royal Naval Division. ‘The Soldier If I should die, think only this of me That there’s a corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed, A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.’ His poetry has frequently been criticised for its unrealistic, romanticised and idealistic view of war. Rupert Brooke died of s...

  Otto Koehn was a Dorchester prisoner of war nicknamed ‘ Jack in a Box’ for his extraordinary exploit. He was a distinguished-looking young man with fair hair and a slight fair moustache. Just 22 years old, he wore a pince-nez. Travelling on a Dutch vessel from the USA to Germany, Otto had been arrested when it berthed at Falmouth. At the start of World War I, he was interned in the prisoner of war camp at Poundbury just outside Dorchester. This was a large camp with as many as 4,500 German and Austrian prisoners. No sooner had Otto arrived in Poundbury, he started to scheme his escape. The opportunity arose when he heard that a group of elderly interns were being sent back to Germany, for humanitarian reasons, as a part of a prisoner exchange agreement with the British. They would travel to Tilbury by train and join the steamer, SS Batavia. After arriving in Rotterdam, they could easily return to the Fatherland. In the prisoners’ canteen Otto bought a box which had contained mat...

  Lassie and Bruce were two canine heroes from the First World War. Their touching but sad story concerns one of the greatest of ever local maritime tragedies. Lassie was a rough-haired collie who saved the life of Scottish seaman, John Cowan. The Able Seaman had come ashore with a boatload of survivors at Lyme Regis from the Royal Navy’s HMS Formidable. This 16,000 ton but obsolete battleship had been torpedoed in the English Channel by German submarine U24 during the early hours of New Year’s Day 1915. It had sunk some 30 miles off Portland Bill. As the weather was bad, it was wrongly assumed a submarine attack was unlikely. HMS Formidable had been engaged in gun practice. Given up for dead, John was laid out with six others on the beer cellar floor of the Pilot Boat Inn which publican, Tom Atkins had agreed could become a makeshift mortuary. As all the Scot was wearing were a pair of thin pants and a vest, it was reasonably assumed he had not survived his 22 hour experience. Oth...

During World War I, an urgent call went out to scouts and school children to collect acorns and conkers. This request came from the Royal Naval Cordite Factory at Holton Heath. Young collectors were told this was valuable war work. The reason was not explained but an assurance was given to the gatherers that they would be paid for their collections. The factory had been built after the Admiralty had decided it needed its own cordite manufacturing facility. Holton Heath site had been chosen because it was away from centres of population yet still had good road, rail and sea links. The factory had its own site railway built and a jetty in Poole Harbour from where the cordite was shipped to Priddy’s Hard at Gosport. Cordite was a propellant used in gun and artillery ammunition. During World War I, vast quantities were required and the chemical acetone was one of its constituents. At first acetone was distilled from wheat much of which washed imported from the USA. However by mid 1917, whe...

  A military site between Wareham and Poole was so secret it was deliberately left off an Ordnance Survey map published in the 1940s. At its peak it was the largest industrial complex in Dorset employing around 2,000 people. It was the Royal Navy Cordite Factory. Cordite was a smokeless material developed to replace gunpowder as a military propellant. It was used in large weapons such as tank guns, artillery & naval guns. It was so called because of its cord like appearance. The explosives site was built during World War I at Holton Heath with the help of around 500 bricklayers. First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill had decided the Royal Navy needed its own cordite manufacturing facility. During this war, certificates were issued to men working at Holton Heath to prove they were engaged on important war work and were not avoiding joining the armed forces. The factory included a power station, two acid factories, a reservoir, various buildings and a hospital area. A...

There were four German prisoner of war camps in the Blandford area during World War One. These were on Blandford Camp, at the Blandford Milldown, at Crichel and in Iwerne Minster. The last two were small agricultural camps. Blandford Camp was by far the largest and in March 1917 held nearly 1,400 prisoners. It covered 12 acres together with another 17 acres for recreation. The majority of prisoners were German although there were some Austrians. Reflecting the class structure of the time, officers were accommodated separately from the men and in better conditions. The Camp had around 50 wooden huts including 34 dormitories heated by stoves and lit by electricity. One way in which internees kept themselves entertained was by what was known as ‘Schiebung’ . Life in the camps was lived under strict rules which internees would challenge to break whenever it was safe to do so. The more ingenious the initiative the better it was enjoyed. Alcohol was prohibited but empty bottles would be co...

Nicknamed the ‘ Powder Puff Line’ , Blandford Camp railway probably had the shortest and most controversial working life of any railway in Britain. Blandford Camp railway was a small branch line built towards the end of World War I which connected the town with Blandford Camp designed to carry both supplies and personnel. It left the Somerset & Dorset line just to the south of Blandford Station passed along the borders of Langton Long, crossed the Blandford-Wimborne road and climbed up to the military camp. At the Camp end of the line there was a 200 yards long halt style platform. This remained in place until the 1960s. Although today Blandford Camp is an army establishment, its first permanent occupants were the Royal Naval Division to be followed by the Royal Air Force in 1918. The RAF had been formed in April 1918 and its Blandford base of 15,000 military personnel became a major entry point for new recruits. It was also the location of the Royal Air Force’s Headquarter’s Gen...

A Dorset village was once recognised as the bravest in England. That village was Shillingstone in North Dorset. After the outbreak of World War I, the newspaper the Weekly Dispatch inaugurated a competition for the village that sent, in the first six months of the war, the highest percentage of its population into the British Services. According to local newspaper, the Western Gazette Shillingstone sent 90 men out of a total population of 565. (Western Gazette Friday 26 th September 1919) Across the country,  365 other villages sent in their returns. However, the competition would not prove to be short of controversy. The award was made to Knowlton in Kent which with 39 inhabitants and six houses had sent 11 men. However, the Rector of Shillingstone, Dr Cooke protested that Knowlton was too small to be a village and in fact was a hamlet. The matter was referred to the Attorney General, Sir Frederick Smith who held that the original decision should stand as no minimum populatio...

  Around 100 years ago, there was an influenza outbreak in Blandford and the surrounding villages which had similarities with the corona virus pandemic. Just as Boris Johnson and Prince Charles have been viral victims so were Prime Minister David Lloyd-George and King George V in 1918. Called ‘ Spanish Flu’ , there is little on record showing how the Blandford district was affected. This was because of widespread press censorship. At the end of World War I, newspapers were not allowed to publish stories that might have undermined national morale. However, at Blandford Camp there were so many ‘ Spanish Flu’ deaths that the authorities were unable to suppress this story. Today, the camp is associated with the British Army yet in 1918 it was a massive Royal Flying Corps/Royal Air Force base. Blandford Camp’s story broke in October 1918, when it was suggested that sick recruits had to lie on dirty straw mats and there were insufficient doctors and nurses. Despite this, new recruit...

  During World War I, there was a German Prisoner of War Camp on the Blandford Milldown which opened in June 1917. It held nearly 200 internees who were accommodated initially in three huts and 30 large bell tents. Each tent was lit by lamps but there was no heating. The kitchen was in a shed and tobacco could be purchased from a canteen. As there was no infirmary, all sickness cases were sent to Blandford Camp. There was considerable ill-feeling towards German people at the time and that was often reflected, and frequently encouraged, by newspaper reports. The Weekly Despatch of 6 January 1918 reported that ‘the good people of Blandford are much incensed at what they consider to be undue pampering of a number of German prisoners interned there.’ Apparently, the townspeople were surprised to see at Christmas ‘ batches of their grey clad guests’ entering any shop they pleased and buying what they wished – even tea ‘ by the pound’ as one indignant housewife complained. However, ...