"He was hiding up a tree with a field telephone during the evacuation of Dunkirk when he was captured"

What the Hampson in-laws did in the war

My Uncle Doug, Captain D.D. Stokes of the Royal Artillery, was from a well-known Wrexham family. He was married to my father’s oldest sister, Gwen, from another well-known Wrexham family, the Hampsons, of Charles Street bakery!

Doug was a forward spotter and was in the vanguard hiding up a tree with a field telephone during the evacuation of Dunkirk when he was captured. I believe he was one of the first officers to be captured in the Second World War.

This photograph shows Doug in the PoW camp. He was there for five years.

The article below, from the Wrexham Leader dated May 1945, tells his story.

After the war Doug, Gwen and their daughter Cathy, who was born before the war, went to live in Canada where Doug, who was a chemical engineer, worked for Monsanto. My cousin Cathy and her family still live there.

This is Auntie Jenny. She married my father’s older brother, Wally, in December 1945. I believe they met at a village dance during the war, but I don’t know where.

The first photo shows her in her Women’s Land Army uniform and the second in her working clothes doing her job as a land girl.

Jenny and Wally were great fun and we loved their visits.

As Remembrance Day approaches, I pause and think of the bravery my family and countless others showed during terrible times.