Remembering D-Day 6th June 1944 – the Wild Planet Trust Connection

Clennon Gorge hasn’t always been such a peacful place as it is today …

Three of the Wild Planet Trust sites in Devon  have D-Day connections worth exploring, 77 years on from the Normandy Invasion of 6th June 1944 – Paignton Zoo and Clennon Gorge and Slapton Ley.  

7^th June 1944 – Zoo staff begin the clear up after thousands of US Army boys quietly leave Clennon Gorge for D-Day beaches.

“This is the Day and This is the Hour …” BBC report on 6^th June 1944 that D-Day (Operation Overlord) or the Allied  invasion  of Europe had started.

Hundreds of thousands of British, American and Allied troops quietly  left the SW coastline at embarkation hards like Torquay and across Devon and Cornwall after months of  training near Slapton Ley and other coastal areas.

The secret Whitley carrier pigeons also played their part aiding  reconnaissance of Normandy and Northern France.

Many young American GIs of the US Army’s 4^th Infantry Division  (4ID or IV – “The Ivy Boys”) had spent their last days waiting, camped under the cover of trees at Clennon Gorge and Paignton Zoo.  We will forgive them eating the odd zoo waterfowl and Primley peacock …

Sadly since I wrote this D-Day post below in 2019, our site at Living Coasts, which was next to the D-Day embarkation hards at Beacon Quay in Torquay, closed during the Covid pandemic in Summer 2020.

Remembering D-Day at the Zoo 75 Years On

Yellow Welsh poppies pop up again in our cleared wartime allotment, heralding lots of wildflowers and pollinators

Another Covid change has been the conversion of the World War Zoo wartime zoo keeper’s allotment garden recreated at Newquay Zoo (2009-2020) into a less time and staff intensive wildflower and pollinator garden as part of our Nearby Nature campaign. Poppies are blooming there as the wildlflower seedlings come through. 

All that research isn’t wasted though as we can still share these stories about how wartime zoos  survived WW2 with you at home or in school through our free downloadable pdf  Wild at Home activities 

We also offer our old Wartime Zoo workshop as an online talk suitable for schools 

WW2 talks page – https://www.newquayzoo.org.uk/education-clubs/virtual-lessons

Remembering the 6th June 1944, 77 years on in 2021

Blog published by Mark Norris Newquay Zoo Education Office, 6 June 2021

Remembering D-Day at the Zoo 75 Years On

June 2019: A self-seeded part of 2018’s Ribbon of Poppies at Newquay Zoo’s  World War Zoo Garden.

Three of the Wild Planet Trust sites in Devon  (our conservation charity formerly known until this year as the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust) have D-Day connections worth exploring 75 years on from the Normandy Invasion of 6th June 1944

• Paignton Zoo and Clennon Gorge
• The Living Coasts area of Torquay
• Slapton Ley

as did members of Herbert Whitley, our founders’  family.

75 years ago today

What should have been D-Day – the 5th June 1944 -was wet and stormy. The invasion was postponed for a day. Many troops were stuck on landing craft, being seasick.

A curious HMSO 1944 diary in our collection from Devon records:

Friday 2 June 1944: large movement of forces and equipment
Saturday 3 June 1944: ditto
Sunday 4 June 1944: boarding for Exercise Category A

Monday 5th June 1944 “En -boarding for Exercise. Weather heavy swell / Storm.” 6th June – No Entry. https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/d-day-and-a-curious-1944-matchbox-diary/

 

Monday 5th June 1944 “En -boarding for Exercise. Weather heavy swell / Storm.”

6th June – No Entry

D-Day and our Zoos?

I have posted about our Zoos and D-Day several times since the 65th anniversary in 2009, the year our wartime garden project started at Newquay Zoo.

2016: https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/remembering-d-day-6th-june-1944/

2014: https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/war-and-the-whitleys-para-medics-peacocks-and-paignton-zoo/

2010: https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/d-day-1944-and-the-disappearing-peacocks-and-ducks-of-wartime-paignton-zoo/
D-Day saw a strange emptying of many south coast and west country towns in Devon and Cornwall, as hundreds  of thousands of US, Canadian and British troops quietly left their army camps and headed for the Normandy beaches from 6 June 1944 onwards.

Camped in tents across many parts of Devon were the IVth (4th) Division of the US infantry, known from their Division badge as the IV boys or Ivy boys. On 6th June 1944 they would leave the safety of the Torbay marshalliing area of Devon to assault Utah Beach. 

One possible wartime Paignton Zoo site of Clennon Gorge quarries, possible site for US troops GI cookhouse / campsite before D-Day June 1944, cleaned up after the war to become a now peaceful nature reserve at Paignton Zoo. (Taken Nov. 2010)

Clennon Gorge / Paignton Zoo June 1944: Under the leafy cover of trees, save from aerial observation, some of the young American servicemen had interesting last suppers.

Part of the Paignton Zoo estate is the nature reserve at Clennon Gorge in Devon, featuring wildfowl ponds and a stream through a limestone valley and quarries down to the sea.

This part of Herbert Whitley’s estate was being developed in the 1930s just before the outbreak of war. Whitley had vision of wildfowl ponds, woodland haunts of a wolf enclosure, old lime kilns turned into small mammal dens and converting old quarries into bear and carnivore enclosures, much in the style of Carl Hagenbeck’s zoo at Hamburg in Germany.

Work had been completed by stonemasons on the first bear dens when war broke out in 1939. The bears never arrived in their dens, but the quarry enclosures were used as cookhouses for US troops camping in the adjoining zoo paddocks whilst waiting for D-Day in 1944.

Cheeky Peafowl, garden pest  of my World War Zoo gardens allotment at Newquay Zoo,  2010.

As Jack Baker wryly notes in the ‘Blue Book’ or Chimps, Champs and Elephants, his history of Whitley and Paignton Zoo’s early days, “A clearing up exercise provided ample evidence that many a zoo peacock and ornamental bird had varied the diet of the visiting ‘doughboys’ …” 

I think you can forgive them this, knowing what hell awaited the G.I. American Infantry  of the “Ivy boys”  on the beaches of Normandy.

Before you head off to Clennon Gorge with a metal detector, I checked with Reserves Warden Dave Ellacott, our man on the ground there, nothing remains of the GI presence there from this period, other than the quarries.

Sadly despite appeals in their veterans’ newsletter, we have unearthed no further memories of this unusual last supper incident from the veterans or their families of the US 4ID association, once encamped at Paignton Zoo.

Many of these American Ivy Boys would head off from Embarkation Points or Concrete Hards like the one built by American Army Engineers next to Living Coasts. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1500735  Others survive along the coastlines of Cornwall such as at Trebah Gardens. .

Memorial / marker for The Hards or D-Day Embarkation Ramps next to Living Coasts in Beacon Quay.

This American “Friendly Invasion” by the Ivy Boys  is well covered in Gerald Wasley’s excellent 1939-45 history book Devon at War.

Third left – Derek Witney, former staff member at Chessington Zoo, spent part of his wartime childhood with the Chessington staff evacuated to Paignton Zoo and remembers the Americans. (Photo: Derek  visiting me at Newquay Zoo with members of  his family, 2014.)

Retired Chessington Zoo staff member Derek Witney remembers Paignton Zoo from  the Chessington evacuation to Paignton Zoo and wartime partnership as Devon’s Zoo and Circus from 1940-1945: he remembers Mr. Whitley, the American troops and large American guns ringing the hills around Paignton, possibly Anti-Aircraft Guns. 

Read more of his story: https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/chessington-zoo-blitzed-2-october-1940-eyewitness-accounts/

The now peaceful Slapton Ley, the freshwater pool beside the sea bought by Herbert Whitley to protect it from development in 1921, was also in a troop training area for practising amphibious invasion tactics for the US Vth Division.

Herbert Whitley bought the unique Slapton Ley area to save it from commercial exploitation. Slapton Ley and its surrounding beaches and rural area became part of a massive US Army live firing training ground in 1943-4 before D-Day, although amphibious landing training had happened there several years before War broke out. This area saw the accidental deaths in training during Exercise Tiger on April  28th 1944.

An unofficial memorial, a Sherman tank salvaged from the sea bed nearby and a more official US war memorial cross records the US forces thanks to the sacrifice of local people in giving up their homes and farms now stand near the beach, remembering the wartime losses.

Exercise Tiger dates in my curious 1944 Diary / Matchbox cover Album

Read more about Exercise Tiger, the Americans and D-Day in Devon  through the mystery of a curious matchbox label album from 1944 in my collection :

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/d-day-and-a-curious-1944-matchbox-diary/

A more private loss was Herbert’s nephew Edward:

Herbert’s nephew Captain Edward Neil Whitley (born c. 1918), Service No: 252025, Royal Army Medical Corps serving with the Parachute Regiment. He died back in England on 29th August 1944 of shrapnel wounds received four days after landing on D-Day 6 June 1944. His gravestone reads interestingly:
“Who landed in Normandy on D Day with the 6th Airborne Division,
was wounded by mortar fire on June 10th while succouring a foeman”
suggesting that he died whilst treating a German casualty.

https://www.paradata.org.uk/media/collection/429
Edward literally was a ‘para – medic’ as he parachuted in with the British 6th Airborne Division paratroops on D-Day June 1944 and is pictured on the Para-data history website along with documents to his mother and photographs.

Newquay Zoo

Newquay Zoo was not built until 1969, one of the successful and surviving animal collections from amongst  the many post-war zoos from the 1950s and 1960s.

Between the years 2000 and 2004 one of the regular contributors to our Paw Prints  Zoo Newsletter was regular visitor Peter Dwyer.

Peter wrote articles about wildlife in Cornwall and in Newquay Zoo, often stressing the peace and calm of watching wildlife around Cornwall or in a good modern zoo. We have been steadily reprinting Paw Prints as part of our Newquay Zoo history blogposts and are now reaching this 2000-2004 period. https://newquayzoohistory.wordpress.com

What Peter rarely talked about was his Navy days as a young man during WW2 including his involvement with D-Day and the Normandy Invasion as a 22 year old sailor. It is mentioned occasionally in his book  Nature Notes from a Cornish Parish published in paperback in  2000 with pictures by Suzanne Pearce (Illustrator).

Although I have not seen Peter for many years (and hope he is still with us)  Peter is remembered in the zoo with a special seat for his 80th Birthday in December 2001.

Remembering those involved in D-Day and the Normandy invasions and its  connection to our zoo sites and many people of Cornwall and Devon – we will remember them.

Posted by Mark Norris, World War Gardens project, Newquay Zoo 5 June 1944

1944 Blog Post Script

You may be interested to read about “The D-Day Dodgers” as they were known, the fierce fighting of the Italian Campaign that cost the lives of several Kew Gardens staff:

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2019/05/16/remembering-j-g-jack-mayne-16th-may-and-the-kew-gardens-casualties-of-1944/

1944 would also see the arrival of the V1 Flying Bombs that menaced London Zoo and Chessington Zoo amongst others, which we will cover in a future blogpost:

Diary of Vera Richardson, South London woman involved in Civil Defence, 1944 – D-Day, Tuesday 6 June 1944 “D-Day Invasion started. Troops landed at Cherbourg. Went to Clapham & Brixton and to Oberon …”

Note also the entry for Thursday 15 “Germany started sending pilot-less planes” – the first mention in the diary of V1 “doodlebugs” (Copyright: Diary in Mark Norris’  wartime life collection) Watch this space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering D-Day 6th June 1944

29th Lets Go! Over Here, then off to D-Day beaches 1944: wreath at Trebah Gardens war memorial, Cornwall

6th June 1944 was an important date in World War Two, the Normandy Landings and especially poignant in our three zoos’ local areas of Cornwall, Devon and the South West Coast.

Thousands of American, British and Allied Servicemen left our local basecamps, airfields and coastal areas where they had trained for the shores of Normandy, many of them never to return.

Since 2009 we have posted several blogposts on D-Day and our sister zoo,  Paignton Zoo . Thousands of young Americans were camped over the Clennon Gorge part of Paignton Zoo ready for embarkation onto landing craft  next to our other sister zoo, Living Coasts.

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/d-day-1944-and-the-disappearing-peacocks-and-ducks-of-wartime-paignton-zoo

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/please-do-not-eat-the-peacocks-when-visiting-the-zoo/

 

D Day Embarkation Hard next to our sister zoo Living Coasts, Torquay.  

Hundreds of American servicemen perished off the coast of Slapton Sands, a battle training area, where our founder Herbert Whitley had purchased the now peaceful Slapton Ley as a field reserve.

 

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/d-day-and-a-curious-1944-matchbox-diary/

Operation Tiger dated entries , 1944 diary WWZG collection Image: Mark Norris, WWZG.

Recently I spotted several other local D-Day links in Weymouth on my zoo travels:

 

thhhth

Weymouth D-Day plaque of thanks from US troops.

As well as the Weymouth memorial, I noticed a new D-Day plaque in 2014 at Lyme Regis whilst fossil hunting there. We use the ammonites and other Jurassic Coast  fossils in dinosaur and extinction workshops at Newquay Zoo.

Falmouth about 25 miles from Newquay Zoo also has a D-Day memorial shelter as  thanks from US troops stationed across Cornwall

Falmouth D-Day memorial shelter, near Gyllyngvase Beach / Pendennis Castle. 2016.

:

Compass plaque, Falmouth D-day memorial shelter.

 

D-Day remembered 6th June 1944 / 2016 across our three zoo sites and  the Southwest.

Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, 6th June 2016.

D-Day and a curious 1944 matchbox diary

Amongst my World War Zoo Gardens project collection of original civilian diaries and letters from WW2 is a recently acquired  1944 HMSO No. S3 Diary, its military date stamp [Jan?] 1944, crossed out with childish writing: “Matchbox Album”

Front cover of Bernie Walker’s curious 1944 diary. Image: Mark Norris, WWZG

Inside along with adverts to buy 3% Defence Bonds from the National Savings Committee is the pencilled inscription S/Sgt Bernie Walker US Army for ‘Sammy‘, amidst lists in childish writing [by Sammy?] of countries where the matchbooks and matchbox covers pasted on the pages have come from.

‘For Sammy’ title page 1944 diary. Image: Mark Norris, WWZG

January to March 1944 pages are covered with matchbox covers some of which have overprinted “War Quality 2 Pices” on Indian made matchboxes, a few possibly postwar ones (marked 1947) from almost every country in Europe and many countries of the Empire (India, Burma, S.Africa) as well as Canada, USA, Japan, Lebanon and others.

Wartime propaganda matchbooks & matchbox labels, 1944 diary WWZG collection Image: Mark Norris, WWZG.

The matchbox labels themselves are interesting as wartime propaganda, with lots of patriotic slogans:
– “Waste in wartime is a crime”
– “Save food, save metal, save bags, save paper”
– “Save coal gas electricity paraffin, save fuel for battle!”
– a football picture with the words “Back up your side, and help the war effort”.
– “Don’t talk about your work, get on with it!”
– “We must win! Buy more war bonds stamps” and other similar
– “Invest in America, Buy War Bonds” (Maryland USA match co.) and “Keep ‘Em Flying Buy War Bonds” (Jersey USA match co.)
– Canadian YMCA War Services Along with a big “V for Victory” (Canadian matches)

More wartime propaganda matchbooks & matchbox labels, 1944 diary WWZG collection Image: Mark Norris, WWZG.

A colourful childhood collection given to & continued by Sammy?

However on the first blank pages in late March 1944 is written:

Wednesday 29 March 1944: Surgeon Commander Visit to Unit with General Bradley and General Gerhardt and [?] HQ.

1944 diary WWZG collection Image: Mark Norris, WWZG.

Charles Gerhardt (June 6, 1895 – October 9, 1976) commanded the U.S. 29th Infantry Division from 1943 throughout its training in Cornwall and Devon and D-Day until the end of World War 2.  Omar Bradley was chosen to command the US First Army throughout D-Day. I’m not sure who the Surgeon Commander was, it may well have been US Army Surgeon General Norman Kirk

May 1944 diary entries, Walker diary WWZG collection Image: Mark Norris, WWZG.

Monday 24 April 1944: Intensive Training Category B Exercise (Amphibious) (B)

Ditto for Tuesday 25 to Thursday 27 April 1944.

Friday 28 April 1944 – Training Live Category A ocean and beach Assault (A)
Enemy shipping in Area (U/T) some units engaged. Some of our boats lost.

Saturday 29 April 1944: All information heavily censored and restricted.

The following first week of May the diary is ruled across and the words “Censored” written in, no other entries recorded throughout the rest of May. It is interesting to see contemporary references to Exercise Tiger, where hundreds of US servicemen were lost off Slapton Sands in Devon on 28/29 April 1944.

Friday 2 June 1944: large movement of forces and equipment

Saturday 3 June 1944: ditto

Sunday 4 June 1944: boarding for Exercise Category A

Monday 5 June 1944: En boarding for Exercise. Weather heavy swell / Storm

More wartime propaganda matchbooks & matchbox labels, 1944 diary WWZG collection Image: Mark Norris, WWZG.

No further entries are recorded for the day after, 6th June 1944, which was of course D-Day.

There are only a couple more scrawled entries:

Tuesday 18 July 1944:  St Lo France Falls.

Thursday 26 August 1944:  Brest France Offensive

Monday 18 September 1944:  Brest France Falls

Thursday 7 December 1944 page lists River Elbe 4/19/45
River Roer 2/23/45. Bremen Germany 1945

The remaining pages are full of matchbox and matchbook covers, some from wartime, others from the 1950s (for example Festival of Britain 1951, Ascent of Everest 1953).

More Research Needed?

I’m not sure at the moment about the full story behind the diary / album and it demands more research. If you have any other thoughts or insights on this unusual diary, please contact me through the comments page.

• Who was ‘Sammy’ for whom the diary or album was a gift?
• Who was Staff Sergeant Bernie Walker who gave the album & presumably wrote the diary?
• When and how were the matchbooks and matchboxes collected?

Looking at these places and dates, it seems likely that this album is from someone connected with the 29th Infantry Division. In May 1943 the division moved to the Devon–Cornwall peninsula and started conducting simulated attacks against fortified positions. At this time it was assigned to V Corps of the First United States Army. After training in England for two years, the 29th took part in D-Day or Operation Overlord, the landings in Normandy. The division was among the first wave of troops to the shore at Omaha Beach, suffering massive casualties in the process. It then advanced to Saint-Lô, and eventually through France and into Germany itself. All this tallies with entries in the diary.

Hopefully the 29th Infantry Division Historical Society or Regimental Association may have a record of Staff Sergeant Bernie Walker. There is an excellent autobiographical article by PFC Mills H. Hobbs in the recent 29th Association newsletter. The 29th have several related reenactment groups which you can find online, no doubt very busy with June 1944 commemorations.

Previous related blog posts
I have written several times about D-Day stories uncovered during World War Zoo Gardens research, and our Cornwall and Devon links, through Newquay Zoo, Paignton Zoo and Slapton Ley (all run by the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust).
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/d-day-1944-and-the-disappearing-peacocks-and-ducks-of-wartime-paignton-zoo/

https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/over-here-70th-anniversary-of-first-us-troops-arriving-in-britain/

So this week on the 70th anniversary of the 6th June 1944 landings I will be thinking of S/Sgt Bernie Walker, among  the many V Corps / 29th division troops that embarked from our local Cornwall & Devon beaches, hards & harbours like Brixham & Trebah, those that trained at Slapton Sands, as well as the US IVth Infantry Division  GIs (the “Ivy Boys”) camped at Paignton Zoo not to mention some missing & delicious peacocks & wildfowl …

29 Lets Go –  Over Here, then off to D-Day beaches 1944: wreath at Trebah Gardens war memorial, Cornwall

 

I’ll also be thinking of one of my neighbours whose late father went in with the British 48th Royal Marine Commandos at Juno Beach (pictured in the IWM image B5218 )  & survived the Normandy Landings on 6 June 1944, but that’s another story for another blog post …

Thanks to Nigel & Tony at http://www.militarytrader.co.uk for their sourcing & assistance with the item.

D-Day 1944 and the disappearing peacocks and ducks of wartime Paignton Zoo

Photographic proof! Peacock (or peahen) sized garden pests peck away at our salad leaf selection, World War Zoo Gardens, Newquay Zoo.

Peacocks are an unlikely garden pest but I have posted photographic evidence – proof – that what I thought was slug and snail damage was pecking by birds. 

It could also be the egg shells donated by the zoo’s Cafe Lemur staff that are intended (crushed) to deter slugs. Might they attract a peahen preparing to nest? A rich source of calcium and we know peacocks to be nest raiders and wreckers around the zoo, especially of other free-ranging birds. 

The D-Day anniversary passed quietly nationally on the 6th June, not being a major anniversary year. For many of those involved in the Normandy  Veterans Association, it would have been a day to remember quietly or in company of other veterans.  However many sites around the SouthWest coast mark the occasion of D-Day, such as at Trebah Gardens in Cornwall, marking the moment when thousands of young British, Canadian and especially American troops left the South(west) coast bound for Occupied France. For many, they never speak of the events; Peter Dwyer, a much-loved zoo volunteer and  nature columnist into his eighties in our past zoo newsletter Paw Prints spoke and wrote often colourfully about local bird life, the zoo’s exotic inhabitants but rarely about his D-Day experiences aboard LST Landing Ships. 

Diary of an anonymous South London woman involved in Civil Defence, 1944 - D-Day, Tuesday 6 June 1944 "D-Day Invasion started. troops landed at Cherbourg. Went to Clapham & Brixton and to Oberon ..." nOte also the entry for Thursday 15 "Germany started sending pilot-less planes" - the first mention in the diary of V1 "doodlebugs" (Copyright: Diary in the World War Zoo wartime life collection, Newquay Zoo)

Diaries in the zoo’s  wartime life collection quietly mark the events amongst all the clutter of everyday life queuing for rations or working on the farm. 

D-Day saw a strange emptying of many South coast and West country towns in Devon and Cornwall, as tens of thousands of US, Canadian and British troops left their army camps and headed for the Normandy beaches from 6 June onwards. 

 Some of the American servicemen had an infamous last supper. Part of the Paignton Zoo estate is the nature reserve at Clennon Gorge in Devon, featuring wildfowl ponds and a stream through a limestone valley down to the sea. This part of Herbert Whitley’s estate was being developed in the 1930s just before the outbreak of war. Whitley had  vision of wildfowl ponds, woodland haunts of a wolf enclosure, old lime kilns turned into small mammal dens and converting old quarries into bear and carnivore enclosures, much in the style, ironically, of Carl  Hagenbeck’s zoo at Hamburg in Germany. Work had been completed by stonemasons on the first bear dens when war broke out in 1939. The bears never arrived in their dens, but the quarry enclosures were used as cookhouses for US troops camping in the adjoining zoo paddocks whilst waiting for D-Day in 1944. (At the same time, RAF and American bombing raids were targeting Berlin, Frankfurt, Nuremberg and other German towns with renowned zoos.)  

 As Jack Baker wryly notes in Chimps, Champs and Elephants, his history of Whitley and Paignton Zoo’s early days, “A clearing up exercise provided ample evidence that many a zoo peacock and ornamental bird had varied the diet of the visiting ‘doughboys’ …” 

So maybe those pesky peacocks pecking away at the plants of the World War Zoo “dig for victory garden” at Newquay Zoo 70 years later  is their way of extracting compensation or reparation. 

 We haven’t yet identified which US regiments or divisions spent their last days in England,  camped at Paignton Zoo and Clennon Gorge, so if anyone knows we would interested to find out more. Maybe in America somewhere, there are US veterans in their 80s and 90s who remember this unusual last meal of exotic bird or camping in the zoo grounds over 65 years ago. It would be interesting to hear from them and their memories of Paignton Zoo in wartime. We can be contacted at the World War Zoo gardens project via mark.norris@newquayzoo.org.uk  

 The training for the D-Day landing formed part of the tragic events at  Slapton Ley, then part of Herbert Whitley’s  estate. It is now a peaceful nature reserve owned by the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust which runs nearby  Paignton Zoo www.paigntonzoo.org.uk , Living Coasts www.livingcoasts.org.uk and ourselves at Newquay Zoo. The similarity of the beaches and nearby countryside at Slapton matched those on the D-day beaches in Normandy. The local population was moved out, many never to return and the countryside, woods and villages devastated by shellfire. An American War Memorial lists the names of those several hundred US servicemen lost on ‘Operation Tiger’, when a secret live firing exercise practising for D-Day was interrupted by German torpedo boats. A Sherman tank has now been raised from the seabed as another stark memorial of the events at Start Bay and Slapton Sands in 1944. 

"Let your shopping help our shipping" was one propaganda message about saving food - grow your own is another, promoted by a typical piece of advertising from a wartime gardening magazine (from the World War Zoo gardening collection / archive at Newquay Zoo).

In our next blog entries, we’ll look at the rapidly unfolding events of 1940 as Dunkirk was evacuated and what effects it had on zoos, botanic gardens and the zoo staff, families, animals and visitors. It must have seemed to many people that the world or their world was collapsing quickly out of control. 

 This period of June and July 1940 is being widely commemorated by many events 70 years on; it saw the first intensive bombing raids on towns in South Wales from bases in Europe on July 10^th and the Battle of Britain dawns in the sky, whilst Operation Sealion (for invasion of England) planning began in Germany and Occupied France on July 2^nd 1940. The Blitz bombing on British cities such as Bristol, London, Manchester, Liverpool and their zoos was not far off in September 1940.   

Already bombed, Paris with its historic zoo was occupied on 14^th June 1940. The surrender of France swiftly followed on June 22^nd. The occupation of the Channel Islands and its tomato rich market gardens began on June 30^th 1940 (islands later to be the site of Gerald Durrell’s hugely influential Jersey Zoo, postwar) amidst the  occupation of much of Europe which saw food supplies dwindle to blockaded Britain. Submarine attacks increased confidently from their new bases in Channel ports. 217 Allied merchant ships would be sunk supplying Britain in the next three months, crossing the Atlantic from July to October 1940. “Let your Shopping help our shipping” became a new ‘food miles’ motto. 

Britain dug in, Dug for Victory on its lawns and back gardens and drilled its Home Guard. General De Gaulle over the BBC radio on the 18^th and 23^rd June famously praised the flame of French resistance that had survived and found shelter in England amongst the Free French and many other Allies.  

• So what did these events mean for many of the zoos at the time?
• What can we learn from this for the future challenges of climate change and extreme or peak oil? 
• Which objects of the Newquay Zoo wartime life collection best evoke this 1940 period?
• What’s been happening in the World War Zoo ‘dig for victory’ zoo keepers’ wartime garden at Newquay Zoo?
• What allies, sacrifices and fall guys can a wartime gardener or one today rely on in the perennial battle against pests and diseases? (we’ll look at companion planting).

 You can find out more  in future blog entries and review past ones on the World War Zoo gardens project, archived on this site (see the menu or tool bar, right).

Waste not, want not and D-Day: throwaway food versus Newquay Zoo’s wartime zoo keepers ‘grow your own’ garden

A bucket full of weeding, 'waste not, want not' signage from a wartime children's book and Spinach beet from the Newquay Zoo wartime zoo keepers' garden.

The wartime Squander Bug is back in Britain with a vengeance!

The change in hours with Daylight Saving Time (another hangover from wartime) meant I was awake for the farming news on the radio this morning . WRAP the food wastage and recycling thinktank reckoned that over five million potatoes are thrown in our household bins each day, with a similar number of tomatoes and 1 to 2 million apples a day (which would obviously keep away lots of doctors). You can find out more on their website http://www.wrap.org.uk/ and and their ad campaign Love Food Hate Waste http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/.  

This is obviously one very large wasted compost heap going into landfill! I wonder what wartime zoo keepers and families on rations for themselves and animals would have thought of this? What would Potato Pete (as sung by a young Betty Driver, later Betty Turpin of Coronation Street fame) have said?

The facts and figures of annual UK household food waste make alarming reading by wartime standards  http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/The_Food_We_Waste_v2__2_.dd97c529.5635.pdf 

Perhaps if we had to grow more of our own vegetables we might treat them with more value?

Weeding out grass from amongst the late autumn salad in the zoo veg patch over the weekend (my least favourite job) brought this home. Later on in the day came  the news reports of possibly the last Normandy Veterans commemoration service at Westminster Abbey  yesterday.  Many of these D-Day veterans, now in their eighties and nineties, left England for France from beaches along the West Country locally at Trebah Gardens, where a memorail now stands to them. GI troops from the USA encamped at our sister zoo in Paignton (and ate the peacocks)  or trained disastrously around Paignton Zoo’s now peaceful nature reserve at Slapton Sands and Ley (as mentioned in our earlier blogs with its own poignant Sherman tank memorial). One of these Normandy veterans Peter Dwyer, an old friend of the zoo and contributor of nature notes to the Zoo Newsletter Paw Prints in the past, has his own happier occasion plaque on a bench in the zoo celebrating his 80th birthday here a few years back.

Today the Poppy appeal is launched locally by the Royal British Legion and we will plan to plant poppies (alongside potatoes!) in next year’s wartime garden. Poppies will be there not for the eating nor the colour but to help us remember. To happily remember men like Peter Dwyer and sadly remember thousands of others, zoo staff included, who did not return or recover and who could not forget. Not forgotten …

World War Zoo

World War Zoo is about looking back and looking forward, learning from the past to prepare for our future. The project developed from a chance discovery that zoos were closed in the early weeks of World War Two, and even though they were re-opened and supported as a way to boost morale, they struggled throughout. This was a time when food was short, and animals didn’t get ration books. Staffing was low with keepers being called up to fight, and repairs were difficult.

‘‘Our Wartime Garden project reflects the Dig for Victory gardens that sprang up in unlikely places all over the country, including zoos. It will also act as a living memorial to the bravery of many ordinary men, women and children. Newquay Zoo already recycles, composts and think about food miles when sourcing food for the café, and now the Victory Garden will demonstrate how keepers would grow food for the animals.’’ Staff at the zoo are hoping for a good crop of vegetables before the weather turns!

 To bring the period alive for families and schools visiting the zoo, staff members have been collecting wartime memorabilia and evocative items from everyday life of keepers, families, evacuated children and zoo visitors.