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WWII Cairn - Southwood/Blandford Camp, UK (original)
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On 26 July 1945 Major General E.G. Weeks unveiled a cairn at entrance to Southwood Camp in Cove, Farnborough, Hampshire. The camp, which had been occupied since June 1940, was home to the 1st Canadian Signals Reinforcement Unit. No. 1 Canadian Signals Reinforcement Unit (C.S.R.U.) was the first English home for thousands of reinforcements arriving from Canada. It was used as the depot for all signalmen discharged from hospital; the training camp for drafts being sent to field units; the base at which several Canadian Signals units were mobilized; and the examining authority which granted trades pay to qualified technicians. Following the war, Southwood Camp was given over to the Royal Engineers and on 18 June 1975, looking for a more appropriate location for the Canadian Cairn, it was moved from Southwood Camp to Blandford Camp, Dorset. Blandford has served as a communication site as early as 1806 when a Murray Shutter Telegraph Station was located at Telegraph Clump to connect the Admiralty with the South Coast naval bases. It is now considered home of the British Signal Corps. The cairn's new site was originally Roosevelt Gardens, a United States memorial, which was designed constructed by a US soldier at the time when the Camp was occupied by the US General Hospital during the Second World War.
Photo and text from Maj Paul Rutherford's and Maj Jeff Drummond's article in C&E Newsletter Volume 37. |
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