Wartime Scrapbooks of Dennis Endean Ivall (1921-2006)

Dennis Endean Ivall was my second cousin, once removed. We are both descended from David Ivall (1816-67), a journeyman coachmaker. I never met Dennis, but we spoke by phone and he generously sent me a copy of the excellent research he had done on Ivall family history.

Dennis fought in World War Two. In about 2000, he prepared two scrapbook albums containing pen and ink and pencil sketches, Army Service papers, photographs, maps, newspaper cuttings, and other items all annotated and including commentary about his Army career relating to his service in the Home Guard and the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in India, Burma, Ceylon and Cocos Islands, with explanatory notes and pictures from various sources about the military units he encountered. These albums are now held in the archive collection of the Imperial War Museum in London. I recently visited the museum to see them.

When the war started, Dennis was living with his parents William Charles and Florence Bessie Ivall at 54 Beeches Avenue, Carshalton and working as an accounts clerk at the headquarters of ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) in Westminster. The government requisitioned this building and so Dennis was moved to the ICI Alkali Plant in Winnington, Cheshire (1940). Here he joined the Local Defence Volunteers, which later became the Home Guard.

Dennis enlisted into the Army in February 1941, the scrapbook contains his Attestation Form and Soldier’s Service and Pay Book. He joined the RAOC (Royal Army Ordnance Corps), which had responsibility for weapons, armoured vehicles, other military equipment, ammunition and clothing. Dennis was sent for training at No 2 Training Battalion RAOC at Earl Shilton and Chilwell, Leicestershire. He was posted to India and travelled aboard HMT Cameronia to Durban in South Africa, transferring there to SS Aronda, which arrived in Bombay in September 1941. India was a base for the Middle East campaign at this time (it was before Japan entered the war). Dennis and 100 plus other RAOC Privates were attached to the Indian Army Ordnance Corps (IAOC) at Ferozepur, Punjab. They were all promoted to Sergeant, this being the lowest rank for any British soldier attached to the Indian Army.

Japan entered the war on the side of Germany in December 1941. Dennis was posted to Rangoon Arsenal, Burma. Japan invaded Burma and the Allied troops under command of Lieutenant General William Slim were forced to retreat in March 1942, destroying what would be useful to the enemy. Dennis says that oil refineries, port installations, workshops, vehicles and stores in Rangoon were demolished. The scrapbooks contain a transcription of a letter (dated June 1942) he sent home to his family in Carshalton giving details of the retreat through the Chindwin Valley and hills, arriving in Imphal. He walked 300 miles in 15 days.

In September 1943, Dennis was posted to the Ceylon Command Ordnance Depot. He was promoted to Warrant Officer and in November 1944 was moved with an Ordnance detachment to the Cocos Islands, which are about halfway between Ceylon and Australia. An air strip was built, which became operational in May 1945 as an air base to attack Japanese vessels, installations and bases on Java and Sumatra. RAF planes of No 99 Squadron (Liberator bombers) and No 136 Squadron (Spitfires) operated from there.

The war in the Far East ended on 15 August 1945 when Japan surrendered. After this, Dennis returned to the UK by ship arriving at Liverpool. He was eventually demobilised in August 1946. His war service resulted in Dennis being awarded the following campaign medals: 1939-45 Star, Burma Star, Defence Medal and War Medal.

Throughout the scrapbooks are sketches and paintings of people and places Dennis encountered, particularly of the different uniforms, clothing, races and tribes and soldiers he had seen. There are scenes from the retreat to Burma, aircraft, accommodation and entertainment, also photographs of native scenes, buildings, fellow soldiers, a group photograph of the staff of the RAOC on the Cocos Islands and a portrait photograph of Dennis.

Dennis Endean Ivall (1921-2006), artist and art teacher

Dennis was a grandson of William Ivall (1859-1940), who was a brother of George Ivall (1853-1932), my great grandfather. Dennis’s parents were William Charles Ivall (1883-1968) and his wife Florence Bessie Ivall nee Endean (1885-1960). I made contact with Dennis in 2004, soon after I started my research into the Ivall family. We never met, although we spoke by phone. He kindly supplied me with a copy of the excellent research on Ivall family history he had done between 1955 and 1986. This was enormously helpful.

Dennis Ivall

Dennis’s son David sent me a copy of the tribute below.

Tribute to Dennis Endean Ivall, who passed away on 6th February 2006, aged 84 years, read at his funeral at St. Piran’s Church, Perranarworthal

Dennis Endean Ivall was born in Essex in 1921, the youngest of four children.  His father was then an accountant with ICI and his mother was a member of the Endean family of St. Agnes, so he visited Cornwall for holidays from an early age.  He attended the Sir George Monoux Grammar School in Chingford, and then joined ICI.  In the Second World War he enlisted in the Ordnance Corps, seeing active service in the retreat from Burma, and later in Ceylon and the Cocos Islands, where he reached the rank of Warrant Officer, First Class.

After the war he trained as an artist and art teacher, and it was at this period that he became engaged to Irene Lloyd-Jones, the sister of his best friend from school.  Although she went out to Australia for a year, he was waiting on her return, and they married in 1952.  Working at first as a freelance artist, he later became an art teacher in Barnstaple, North Devon – the nearest to Cornwall that he could get at the time.  It was while living at Barnstaple that their two sons were born – David and Gerard.
 

In 1973, Dennis took early retirement and moved to Cornwall, living at first at Ponsanooth and then for thirty years at Perranwell.  He worked as a designer, a record agent and principally as a heraldic artist and designer, only retiring from this work when suffering from illness in the last three years of his life.

Heraldic art was his great passion, and he carried out the design and painting of coats of arms for many clients across the world.  He was the author of the book Cornish Heraldry and Symbolism and, among the work he carried out in Cornwall, was the painting of the organ panels at Cuby church, the repainting of the coat of arms at St.Dennis after the fire and the design and painting of a banner for St.Agnes and, of course, the banner of St. Piran in this church.

Heraldry and his military service gave rise to an interest in army insignia and badges and, with Professor Charles Thomas, he was the author and illustrator of Military Insignia of Cornwall.  He was a founder member of the Cornwall Militaria Group, and a long serving member of the Perranarworthal branch of the British Legion.
 

His enthusiasm for heraldry led Dennis to join the Order of St.Lazarus, an international charitable order founded in the Holy Land.  He was a member of the Commandery of Avalon in the West Country, and became Judge of Arms of the Commandery, of the Bailiwick of England and then of the whole order worldwide, attaining the rank of Knight Grand Cross.   
   

His other great interest was family history, and in his researches over the years he succeeded in tracing his Ivall ancestors back to the seventeenth century in Hampshire, and his Endean ancestors in Cornwall back to the fifteenth century.  He was a founder member of the Cornwall Family History Society, a committee member for a number of years and, among his projects for the Society, he and Irene recorded and plotted all the memorial inscriptions in Perranarworthal churchyard.  He also studied the Cornish language, becoming a bard of the Cornish Gorseth, and served on the Gorseth Council. 

Although he was such a talented artist, with a worldwide clientele, he was always ready to lend his talents to local activities, whether painting scenery for Carnon Downs Drama Group, drawing posters for the Women’s Institute or touching up the lettering on the war memorial. 

Dennis is survived by Irene, his wife for over fifty years, his two sons and his elder sister in America.  He will be remembered by them as a loving, gentle man, always supportive, never criticising.  He will be remembered by everyone else as someone always cheerful, always with a friendly word or a joke (even if not a very good one), always ready to help.  We shall miss him.