Looking for relatives

When he lost his life on July 8, 1944 in Normandy he was serving with 2nd Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment. Bill Hutchins was married to Connie, of Bexhill, and he served with 7th Battalion The Hampshire Regiment when his unit was stationed in the Cooden area between the autumn of 1943 and June 1944.

Bill left Bexhill in June 1944 to serve in the 7th Hampshire’s reinforcement company, intended to provide replacements for casualties incurred. For whatever reason, those reinforcements were not sent to the Hampshires, but to the Lincolns.

If there are any relatives of William Fred and Constance Eileen Hutchins in the Bexhill area, I would be very pleased to be able to talk to them, if they care to contact me. This is in connection with a project I have, to write a war history of 7th Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment.

Similarly, I know the battalion’s officers during this period lived at the Cooden Beach Hotel, and that soldiers were billeted in houses along the sea front between the hotel and the De La Warr Pavilion. I have been told that access to the area was restricted at the time, but I should be very interested to hear from anyone who is able to tell me exactly where soldiers were billeted and in what houses ?

I have interviewed a number of former soldiers who served in the unit, but readers will realise that these gallant men are now aged in their late 80s and early 90s.

One, for example, worked in the Sergeant’s Mess, but is unable to remember the exact location of the building used (which the owner found to be decoreated with risque drawings when he re-took possession of the property after the war !).

Another remembers being billeted in a large three-storey building near the Pavilion, but which building ? A widow recalled waving farewell to her husband when the unit left by train from Cooden Beach Station on the morning of June 13.

If there are any readers with any knowledge of 7th Hampshires’ stay in the Cooden/Bexhill area during that time, I would be very pleased to hear from them.

IAN TAYLOR

4 Cedar Wood Close, Fair Oak, Eastleigh, Hants, SO50 7LN

Tel: 023 8069 4771

e-mail: [email protected]