Jock's Bible: A Gift for Louisa Stoakes

My maternal grandmother and her siblings (the Stoakes sisters) lived in Dover during WWII, an area that famously earned the title 'Hellfire Corner.' The children were not evacuated, and therefore spent much of the war living underground in a system of caves- to try to remain safe from the aerial bombardments and cross-channel shells.

In her later years, my great aunt Louisa (Lou) Hedgecock (nee Stoakes) wrote down a diary of memories from her time spent in Winchelsea Caves as a child. This is a short excerpt from it, accompanied by a photograph of the Bible that she refers to.

“On Sundays, a vicar would preach to us gathered in 'the hub' of the caves, and sometimes he would manage to bring a small portable organ, and we would join in the hymns with gusto. (The hub was the central area, with the tunnels branching off in different directions). Many soldiers who were in the area used to join in, and I remember one in particular - a young Scot, we only knew him as Jock, and he was a lovely lad; good looking. All the older girls thought he was gorgeous. (I remember, so did I). He was so enthusiastic and would sing out at the top of his voice, singing different harmonies, always full of joy and good cheer. He gave a lot of us children a bible, and I still have mine, written on the fly leaf ‘To Louise, from Jock of Edinburgh’.

Sadly, he was killed with a number of others when a shell dropped on the Market Square. Everyone was devastated. He was a really lovely, kind, happy person and was probably only about 20 years of age. The services somehow never seemed the same after he died.”