D ALLISON

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Reference WMO/112628

Address:

Purley United Reformed Church

Memorial Hall

Brighton Road

Purley

CR8 2LN

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Type: Non freestanding
Location: Internal
Setting: Inside a building - public/private
Description: Framed
Materials:
  • Paper Paper
Conflicts:
  • Second World War (1939-1945)
About the memorial: Drummond Allison Harry & Gertrude Allison lived in Kenley where they brought up four boys Charles, Philip, Douglas and (John) Drummond. They attended Purley Congregational Church and three of the sons went to Caterham School. Harry Allison was Treasurer in the high days of the church’s founding Minister, Arthur Pringle, and then through the ministries of Leslie Atkins, Andrew James, & John Wellar becoming Church Secretary from the 1940s onwards. In 1937 Douglas Allison was accepted for service in the RAF after he learnt to fly at Croydon Aerodrome. When the war came he was posted to Squadron 1X of Bomber Command, equipped with Wellingtons designed for night raids. He married while on leave but the married life only lasted three months before he was shot down over Borkum as he was returning from a raid on a German naval base. His brother christened “Drummond” was the youngest of the four, eight years younger than Douglas and it was during his childhood that he developed imaginary worlds of his own and particularly attracted by stories of the past including Arthurian Legends. In 1939 he won an Open Exhibition to Queen’s College Oxford where he spent a lot of time debating, acting and writing poetry. In 1942 he left Oxford to join the Army, went to Sandhurst and was allocated to the East Surrey Regiment. Through all his training he wrote poetry “because he had to” and enjoyed exploring metaphor in a flexible and resourceful vocabulary. In October 1943 he was seconded to the West Surrey Regiment as an Officer and was sent to North Africa. One of the last things he did was to publish a book of poems “The Yellow Night” which contains the poem appearing on the memorial held by Purley URC. This poem was written as an elegy for his brother Douglas after his death in 1939 . The poem references him in the poignant words “..he had no time to hear my brother laughing” Drummond commented on his verse as “I’m more interested in the technique of verse, the skill with which it is constructed and the noise it makes… would like to suggest that even if a poem is obscure or desperate about unpleasant things, it may be beautiful through its language and the pictures it evokes”. Drummond was soon sent to Italy as part of the re-inforcement of the Eighth Army then fighting its way northwards along the western coast. He was killed in the battle on the Barigliano between Naples and Rome. His Commanding Officer described the end “he died leading his platoon in the attack on a German position at the top of a mountain”. It was early morning on December 3rd 1943. Ross Davies, in his book about Drummond Allison as part of his “The War Poets” series says in his opening paragraph “Perhaps not since Rupert Brooke has a war poet so inspired as many fellow-poets as Drummond Allison….. Ever since (his death) fellow poets have paid tribute to Allison’s energy, charm and vigorous, even audacious verse”. Again Anthony Thwaite hails Allison as “the most accomplished poet of his generation”. Purley URC was presented and entrusted with the handwritten poem in a moulded Oak Frame in 1980 by the family as a perpetual memorial to this talented young man who like so many others forfeited his life for our generation’s peaceful life. It was hung in the memorial chapel and is registered on the UK National Inventory of War Memorials no 10929.
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