In
researching the various people mentioned in these pages their
personal stories are rarely as expected. One of the names on the
Southall County School Memorial board - Joan Fieldgate – posed some
problems in tracing what had happened to them. Joan had no CWGC
entry as a civilian casualty nor did she appear to have served in the
armed forces.
Much
of the information I have found in researching cousin Jim's story has
been of the 'well, I never knew that!' variety - Joan's story falls
into that category. Joan had been just as much the adventurer as any
of the other ex-pupils of Southall County School who became
casualties of the Second World War - a volunteer for
the Children’s Overseas Reception Board. She died in hospital at Ravensburg,Germany on 9th
October 1941, aged 27 years.
'Evacuation
Escort Dies In Germany
LONDON, Nov.
2.—AAP.
The death has
occurred in Germany of a children's overseas evacuation escort. Miss
Joan Fieldgate, who was taken prisoner while returning from
Australia. The ship in which she was travelling was torpedoed. She
spent many months in an internment camp, where she became ill. She
was taken to hospital at Ravensburg. Her (step-)
mother, living in Middlesex, said that letters from her daughter
revealed that she had suffered hardships after the torpedoing, but
was fairly comfortable in Germany. Her daughter mentioned that she
had received hundreds of letters from friends made in Adelaide and
elsewhere in Australia.'
Joan
Louise Fieldgate was born in Gillingham in July 1914, her father
worked as an electrician at Chatham Dockyard, mother died shortly
after Joan’s brother Ivan’s birth in August 1918.
Their
father worked abroad in Hong Kong between 1920 and 1924 leaving Joan
in the care of her father’s parents and Ivan with their mother’s
family. Father subsequently remarried and the family was reunited
back in Gillingham. Several work moves eventually took the family to
West Drayton with Joan attending Southall County School from 1926,
progressing to a student teacher position at the County School
between 1931 and 1932.
In
the autumn of 1932 Joan attended the Avery Hill Teacher Training
College, Eltham, graduating with a teaching diploma in 1934 and
obtaining a post as an art teacher at an elementary school in
Hillingdon. At the outbreak of the Second World War Joan volunteered
as an escort to take evacuee children for the
Children’s Overseas Reception Board from England to
Australia.
Joan was skilled in making clothes and very
interested in fashion. On her initial escort voyage in the ‘Nestor’
she enjoyed a long layover visit in Cape Town where she made contacts
in local fashion houses with a view to possible future employment.
Having
safely delivered their charges in Australia the escorts were due to
sail an easterly route to the south of Chile, thence north to cross
the Atlantic, However, Joan intended to follow-up her fashion leads
in Cape Town and embarked on the ‘Port of Wellington’, a cargo
vessel making a westerly voyage. Ten days out the ’Port of
Wellington’ was attacked by ’the Pinguin’, a German commerce
raider, accompanied by the ‘Storstad’, a tanker accommodating
prisoners which received crew and passengers from the ‘Port of
Wellington’ including Joan Fieldgate. While on board the
‘Storstad’ Joan contracted tropical dysentery as a result of the
poor living conditions.
The
‘Storstad’ returned to Bordeaux from where the prisoners were
taken to Southern Germany, reaching Liebenau in mid-March 1941. By
September Joan was very ill and was admitted to a hospital at
Ravensburg where she died on 9th October 1941. She was
buried in an unmarked grave. A few months later there was an
exchange of prisoners and the remainder of Joan’s group returned
home.
Liebenau
had before the war been been an asylum for Germans adults and
children with mental and physical disabilities. In October 1940
Liebenau was designated by Heinrich Himmler as an internment camp for
civilian women and children of countries with whom Germany was at war
– many of whom were British passport holders. From this point
numerous of the asylum inmates were euthanised to make way for
internees whom, it was hoped, may have future 'bargaining' potential.
'The
Accidental Captives: The Story of Seven Women Alone in Nazi Germany'
by
Carolyn Gossage - includes a brief account of the sad demise of
'Julie' – 'a British escort for a group of English refugee
children being evacuated to Australia. …..she arrived at Liebenau
in April 1941, but was taken ill shortly after her arrival, and was
then misdiagnosed. Before the error could be rectified ….her
patient's case of dysentery had reached the point of no return and
within six months Julie was pronounced dead. News of her death
quickly spread through the camp and with it the realisation that
Julie was, in fact, a peripheral victim of the war from which the
women of Liebenau felt relatively removed and isolated.'
Another
book - 'Who Will Take Our Children?: The British Evacuation
Program of World War II ' by Carlton Jackson -
also includes references to Joan's demise.
Joan
Louise Fieldgate is commemorated by an inscription on her mother
Louise's gravestone in Gillingham (Woodlands) Cemetery, Kent,
England.
Sincere thanks to Joan's brother
Ivan for telling me about his vivacious elder sister.
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