Dennis COMLEY

Dennis Comley's grave in the Hotton War Cemetery, Belgium. Image from Find a Grave.

The memorial in St Matthew’s Church lists a ‘B Comley’. However, there is no trace of a ‘B Comley’ living in South Oxford immediately prior to the Second World War. A ‘William John Comley’ is listed in the 1939 Register as living in London Road, Headington, but he had no evident links with Grandpont or Cold Harbour. The memorial in St Matthew’s was installed in 1948; it is likely that errors crept in, and that Dennis Comley was incorrectly inscribed as ‘B Comley’.

Dennis Comley was born on 12 June 1918 at 129 Marlborough Road, Grandpont. He was the ninth of the twelve children of William and Florence Comley. William had been born in Cottisford, a village in north-east Oxfordshire. He began his working life as a ploughboy but joined the army – as a Private in the Oxfordshire Light Infantry – when he was eighteen. Florence (née Chandler) came originally from Summertown. She and William married on Christmas Day 1900 in St Frideswide’s Church on the Botley Road in Oxford; they were lodging nearby at 40 Mill Street. Florence worked as a machinist in a clothing factory, probably at either Hyde’s on Shoe Lane (off New Inn Hall Street) or Lucas’s on George Street. William was still in the army, and was recorded as living in the Cowley Barracks in the 1901 census, taken on 31 March that year. The couple's first child Florence was born in August 1901, by which time their address was 1 Nelson’s Yard, off St Aldates.

William was discharged from the army in 1902, having served his seven-year term. He initially found work as a labourer and later as a drayman (driving a horse-drawn wagon) for Hall’s Oxford Brewery. Eleven more children – six more daughters and five sons – were born over the next 22 years. Ten survived but two died: the oldest, Florence, when she was five, and Desmond when he was four months old.

Like almost all working-class families, the Comleys rented accommodation, and they moved frequently. In 1903 they were living in Thomson's Yard off St Aldates, and by 1906 in Norfolk Street in St Ebbe's. From there they moved to 8 Stewart Street, New Hinksey; in 1911 Florence’s father George Chandler (a labourer) was living with them there. The following year they moved to 129 Marlborough Road, Grandpont. It is likely that the children attended St Matthews Infants School; a class photograph containing Dennis’s older brother Eric is here.

Four months after the outbreak of the First World War, on 28 November 1914, Dennis’s father William signed up with his old regiment, now called the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Perhaps because of his age – he was forty – he was not posted overseas until January 1917, by which time restrictions on older men being sent abroad had been relaxed due to a shortage of recruits. He served in France and was demobilised in 1919, having risen to the rank of Corporal. Back in Oxford, he found employment with John Wiggins & Sons, corn merchants at 6 Market Street, and is listed in the 1921 census as 'Master Lorrie Driver'. Living with him at 129 Marlborough Road were Florence and their eight children (the youngest, Frances, having been born in October 1919). Dennis was aged three. The oldest girls were working: Violet and Doris as domestic servants for households in north Oxford, and Grace as a dressmaker for Badcock & Co, clothiers of Queen Street. Two more daughters – Beryl and Barbara – were born in 1922 and 1924.

William died aged fifty in 1927, but the family continued to live at 129 Marlborough Road; Florence remained there until her own death thirty years later.

By the time of the 1939 register, taken on 29 September, four weeks after the outbreak of the Second World War, only Florence and her youngest daughters Frances (now aged nineteen and working as an assistant in a fruit shop), Beryl (aged seventeen) and Barbara (fourteen) were still living at 129 Marlborough Road. The older children had married and left home, and it’s likely that Dennis had already enlisted in the army. He joined the 4th Battalion of his father’s old regiment, the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry, as a Private, service number 5387033. He was sent to France in May 1940 as a member of the Expeditionary Force. Operation Dynamo – the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk – started on 26 May. The 4th Battalion were resisting the German advance in Watou, a town in Belgium close to the French border. The Germans bombarded their position on 27 and 28 May, then encircled them. This cut off any possible escape route to Dunkirk, fifteen miles to the north. It is likely that Dennis was killed in this action. He was initially recorded as 'Missing' but then as 'Killed' on 28 May 1940, the day on which the Belgium army surrendered to the Germans. He was 21.

Dennis and other casualties were initially buried nearby, but their bodies were reinterred by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in February 1948 in the Hotton War Cemetery, 65 miles south-east of Brussels in Belgium. His gravestone incorrectly gives his age as 23. He is also commemorated on the Oxford City Second World War Roll of Honour which is in the church of St Michael at the Northgate on Cornmarket, and in the Second World War Book of Remembrance in the Regimental Chapel in Christ Church Cathedral.

During the war Dennis's younger sister Beryl served as a Private with the Auxiliary Territorial Service (the ATS, the women's branch of the British Army). In March 1945 she married a seaman, Leading Telegraphist Stanley Preston, at St Matthew's Church, as reported in the Oxford Mail. Seven months later her younger sister Barbara married Able Seaman Basil Harris at St Matthew's.

Research by John Stobbs; with thanks to Bonita Coulson-Harrison, niece of Dennis Comley.

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