Out & About Autumn 2018

JONATHAN HOPSON

As the nation marks the centenary of the end of the First World War, following the celebrations for 100 years of the RAF, JONATHAN HOPSON remembers two family members who each played a part in the two world wars and died exactly 100 years apart

T his year’s centenaries of the formation of the RAF and the end of the First World War bring to mind two family relatives who served in the armed forces during both world wars and who died 100 years apart. My great uncle Joseph Alfred Hopson, (1888-1915), served with the 2nd Wellington Mounted Rifles and was killed in August 1915 at Gallipoli. Joseph (known as Seph) had chosen to emigrate to New Zealand as he had relatives there. When he enlisted in the Wellington Mounted Rifles, he gave his address as Bristol Road, Inglewood, and his employer as A Hopson – his father’s cousin, Arthur. Joseph’s father, Joseph Herbert, was a furniture dealer at 64 Northbrook Street and his mother, Edith Annie, was the daughter of another notable Newbury trader, Alfred Stradling, a watchmaker and jeweller. The Camp Hopson department store in Northbrook Street, Newbury, was formed when the furniture business of Joseph Hopson & Sons amalgamated with Alfred Camp’s Drapery Bazaar in 1921. The business merger took place the year after the marriage of Joseph’s brother, Paul, to Alfred Camp’s daughter Norah. Joseph is remembered on the Hill 60 New Zealand War Memorial in Turkey and on panel three of Newbury’s war memorial adjacent to St Nicolas Church. There is also a small plaque to Joseph on Alfred Stradling’s grave at Newtown Cemetery, Newbury.

My uncle, Denis Robinson (1918 – 2015), married my father’s sister Margaret, in 1953. He served with 152 squadron based at RAF Warmwell near Dorchester and was one of the ‘Few’, flying a Spitfire Mk.1 during the Battle of Britain in 1940. He shot down a Messerschmitt 109 on July 25 and another on August 5. He was shot down by Messerschmitt 109s of III/JG53 off Swanage on August 8 in Spitfire K9894 and, rather than baling-out, crash-landed in a field near Wareham (see photo). Incredibly, he was unhurt, but his aircraft was a write-off. On August 15, he claimed a Messerschmitt 109 destroyed, two days later, on August 17, a Junkers 87, and on September 4, a Junkers 88. He was released from the RAF as a Flight Lieutenant in 1946 and was seconded to BOAC. He went on to fly for British Caledonian, British United and British United Airways before retiring in 1978. Denis died on July 28, 2015.

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1 . Joseph Hopson

2 . Spitfire Mk.1 in which Denis Robinson survived a wheels-up landing after being shot down by Me 109s on August 8, 1940

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3. Sergeant Denis Robinson

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