From Our Files: Holiday chaos...bones find...bank robbery...war children return
50 YEARS AGO
MANY people in the New Milton/Lymington area found themselves involved in the crash of Court Line.
Holidays booked with that company and its subsidiary companies including Clarksons and Horizon Holidays were suddenly told their trips were cancelled and what appeared at the time slim chance of them getting their money back.
The crash at the height of the holiday season brought embarrassing repercussions and left nearly 50,000 holidaymakers stranded abroad as their flights booked with Court Line aircraft were immediately stopped and Court Line aircraft seized for debt.
Some people in hotels found their luggage impounded by hotels who demanded payment for their rooms before giving it back.
Other travellers about to travel out were told their holidays were off and their payments probably lost.
Mr HR Kalep told the A&T that around 60 people who had booked their holiday through Kew Travel of Lymington had been affected by the crash. He said he had sent telegrams to six families who were abroad asking them to put a transfer charge call back to Kew Travel.
He said: “Our intention was that if the hoteliers were getting a bit excited about payment, we would have sent a cash transfer to the hotel so that our clients could have been released.”
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AN unfinished letter from her husband written in their home on the Cyprus battlefront shortly before he was killed by a Turkish soldier has been received by Mrs Winifred Sunderland in Highcliffe.
The letter was found by a close friend of her husband Sam, 80, when he visited the couple’s damaged house in Kyrenia a week after the shooting.
On July 20th Sam wrote: “My dear wife here we are on the battlefront. We are not allowed to go out, if we do, we are apt to get shot. I would not like that not having said goodbye to my dear wife.
“This morning it was absolute hell with the firing.”
The next day he wrote: “Today I packed my bag they are trying to get us away. So far, no luck they will not quit the firing. Just started up again, it sounds as if their guns are in our garden.”
Mr Sunderland was due to join his wife who was on holiday in Highcliffe but sadly he was shot before he could leave Cyprus. His wife now intends to stay in Highcliffe where she has family.
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When John Smallwood, of Ridgeway Corner, Pennington, found a jawbone in Keyhaven Marshes he took it to his biology teacher at school and was told that it could be human. Lymington police were called, and they ordered a pathologist’s report.
More bones were found on the mud flat, but test proved they were in fact those of a sheep.
25 YEARS AGO
LAST week’s attempted robbery at the Abbey National building society in New Milton was foiled by quick thinking staff who activated an automatic screen mechanism.
As reported in the A&T, the robber fled empty handed. The man confronted cashiers with a handgun which he produced from a carrier bag as he entered the Station Road building at 2.25pm last Thursday.
He pulled a black balaclava with slits for eyes and mouth over his head before demanding money.
Detectives said it was not known if the weapon was genuine. The man was described as white, around 35, 5ft 7ins of short stocky build with dark tousled hair.
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SIXTY years ago, a crowd of young children aged between five and 11 arrived forlornly in Sway bewildered and with many of them weeping. On Sunday 30 of them returned to the village and again there were a few tears.
For way back in 1939 the children had left their Portsmouth homes in not a little confusion, separated from their families to escape the heavy bombing raids on the city.
It was the first reunion for 30 of the former evacuees who returned to the village to reacquaint themselves with their wartime friends. The laughter and chatter paid testament to the great success of the occasion.
Sunday was the culmination of a long-held ambition of one of the evacuees Mrs Margaret Harrad (nee Smith) now of Bristol. She placed adverts in the Portsmouth News which led to a very encouraging response.
The 30 attended a church service followed by tea in the church hall where wartime songs were played. Margaret told the A&T; “It was a different life here. We were all city kids and unused to all the space around Sway. I have many happy memories.”
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SEVENTY-two-year-old Peggy Cooper from New Milton, who suffered burns to her arms when she tried to put out a chip pan fire with water, joined A TV celebrity at the launch of Hampshire Fire and Rescue’s chip pan fire campaign this week.
Peggy suffered burNs and singed hair when she took the pan to the sink to put water in it – something she now knows is the worst way to tackle such a fire.
The campaign is urging the public to banish such pans from their homes and follows a ‘Ban the Pan’ campaign on the TV programme ‘That’s Esther.”.
