587. Norman Bosch Reitz
Norman spent much of his life in the Dutch East Indies working as a planter on a number of plantations. At the beginning of WW II, he was severely burnt while he was destroying plantation equipment in the path of the advancing Japanese. He spent the war in various internment camps and in 1946 received plastic surgery treatment at East Grinstead, Sussex, and visited his father’s sister, Aunt Millie, nearby at Pevensey. Norman had married Maria Antoinette Therese ‘Mies’ Boekwijt (1912- ) in 1933 and had four children. Two were interned with their mother in various Japanese prisoner-of-war camps until August 1945, and one was born in a camp. The reunited family came back to Surinam but left when that colony became independent in 1957 and returned to Holland.
Elsie Doreen was educated at Berkhamsted Girls’ Grammar School before returning to British Guiana in about 1932. She married Geoffrey Haward Smellie (1895-1979) in All Saints' Church, New Amsterdam, Berbice in 1929 (See The Smellie Family). Towards the end of her life, Elsie wrote her memoirs, a 50-page account of her family life in British Guiana, England and Malaya. At the end of the war, while still fresh in her mind, she had also written a vivid account of the 14½ week sea voyage, starting in October 1944, from British Guiana to England to take her sons to school there. One can only marvel at Elsie’s resilience and adaptability, coping with ration books and the deprivations of war-torn England and later setting up a permanent home and having to master the arts of the kitchen, after leading a comparatively privileged life with servants in Guiana. Like her mother, Elsie had a long widowhood, latterly living in Petworth, Sussex, near her sister Dorothy, before moving to a nursing home in Warminster, Wiltshire, where she died in her 94th year.
Geoffrey Haward Smellie C.B.E.
Geoffrey Haward (1895-1979) was educated at St Edmund’s School, Canterbury. He was commissioned into the 9th King’s Own (Royal Lancaster) Regiment, incidentally in the same battalion as his uncle, John Omond Smellie. He was sent to Salonika in December 1915, taking part in the campaign at Lake Doiran, where he was mentioned in Despatches ‘for gallant conduct and distinguished service rendered’ during the period of the major engagements in 1918. A book on the regiment gives an account of the conditions encountered: ‘The Bulgarians were enterprising and fought well, but the British troops had three far more potent enemies. The ground was hilly, almost mountainous, with virtually non-existent roads making major operations hazardous in the extreme. The climate was bitterly cold in the winter and excessively hot in the summer. But the greatest enemy of all was the mosquito, which caused more admissions to hospital than did enemy action. The battalion, in three years, suffered only 400 battle casualties, but almost double that number went sick with malaria, some more than once’. After the war, Geoffrey did not take up his scholarship at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and a hoped-for future in the Indian Civil Service, but returned to Demerara, joining the firm and eventually succeeding his father as managing director of Garnetts in Georgetown. He served on both the Legislative and Executive Councils of British Guiana, being awarded the C.B.E. in 1956. He is mentioned in Michael Swan’s book ‘British Guiana: The Land of Six Peoples’, concerning the ill-fated negotiations over West Indian Federation. He retired to England in 1956, soon after Garnetts had been acquired by Bookers, and at much the same time as one of Georgetown’s devastating fires had demolished the company’s premises in Water Street. He died in Hailsham, Sussex in 1979.
593. Dorothy Eileen Waterfield
Dorothy Eileen ‘Doddles’ was educated at Berkhamsted Girls’ Grammar School and worked as a nurse in Hastings. She died at Liphook, Hampshire. In 1936, she married John Herbert ‘Jack’ Bavin (1901-1982) in India. Jack had been a volunteer Lt Col in the Assam Bengal Railway Battalion and worked for Assam Bengal Railways, as an accountant and in developing and installing the first computerised (punch-card) system. He had been previously married to Muriel Joyce Berryman who died in 1935. The children from this marriage were Allen Cassels and Michael John who both married and had progeny. Jack was a keen musician and built the organ in the Anglican Church in Chittagong, forming the organ pipes out of papier mâché. After retiring, he played the organ at his local church in Sussex where he died. He had a heart attack and fell off his stool while playing the organ one Sunday.
594. Anthony Mourdant Innis Austin Q.C.
He was christened Innis, not Inniss, as a result of a recording error when he was christened, for his grandfather’s name was Inniss. At the outbreak of World War II he enlisted in the army, was commissioned, joined a Sikh Regiment and was stationed at Lorelei, near Quetta, Pakistan. He was appointed A.D.C. to General Bill Basto and went with him to Singapore. He was captured by the Japanese when Singapore fell in 1942 and interned in Changi jail in Singapore until it was liberated in 1945. He just missed being sent to the infamous Burma railway because of his bad ulcers. Although in poor health, he was in great spirit. He knew the artist Ronald Searle well - all the prisoners tried to save paper for him so that he could draw. He also knew Russell Braddon, the Australian journalist and author who wrote ‘The Naked Island’ [publisher Michael Joseph, 1981], an account of life as a Japanese prisoner of war.
Anthony married Margaret Lillian Lowcay in 1946 and they had two children. After the war, Anthony joined the Colonial Legal Service and held legal appointments in Malaya and Malta. He was Attorney General in British Guiana from 1957 to 1962, becoming a Queen's Counsel. He left the service in 1962, returned to law school in order to be able to practice as a solicitor in England and was later appointed an assistant judge. He became custodian of the Austin family papers, corresponded with many relatives, and added to and updated the Austin Lineage begun by Marie Louise Kleber.
595. Ruby Josephine Behijah Austin
She married Anthony Lisle Lee (1916-1957) and they had a child, Anthea Lisle, born in 1946. Anthea married Richard Howard Sharp in 1968 and they have two children, Leo Anthony Merion, born in 1975, and Oscar Adam William, born in 1979.
596. Mary Austin
Mary started a hairdressing saloon in Penzance and was an air-raid warden during World War II. Later, she married an army captain, Bertram George Dillon (1913- ) in 1944. They spent some years in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and, after returning to England, became mayor and mayoress of Bournemouth. They had two children, Jane, born in 1945 and George Austin, born in 1950. Jane is married and has a son, Simon Pearce, born in 1975.
597. Laura Austin
Laura is the twin sister of Mary. Their mother died after the twins were born. Laura first worked as a hairdresser in her sister’s saloon, but later did secretarial work in London and in Hertfordshire. In 1936, she married, but later divorced, Bernard Theodore Hitchins (1912-1987), and they had a son, Anthony Dare, born in 1937