Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
War veteran had major role in health service changes
Former POW worked for St Augustine’s Hospital for more than 30 years
One of the last surviving Kent veterans who served throughout the whole of Second World War has died aged 96.
William Pryor, known as Roy, was born in Ashford and moved to live in Canterbury after the war.
He worked at St Augustine’s Hospital, Chartham, for more than 30 years where he ran the medical secretariat.
Roy joined the TA in 1938 and when war was declared in 1939 chose to serve as ambulance crew in the Royal Army Medical Corps rather than to bear arms.
He was captured while providing medical aid to the wounded during the retreat to Dunkirk and spent the next five years as a prisoner of war
When first captured he and thousands of others were made to march across Europe for weeks in the socalled first Death March which saw thousands die by the roadside and in rail cattle trucks – there were no POW camps ready.
They were rarely fed but Roy was among those who kept themselves alive by eating and drinking what they could forage from fields and ditches across France, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany.
He was repatriated because of severe illness in 1944 a week before D-day and met and married Pat. They celebrated their 69th wedding anniversary this year.
When war ended they moved to Bramley Avenue, Canterbury, where Roy was an active member of the Ashford Road Social Club.
He was a member and avid supporter of Kent County Cricket Club.
In the early years he used to cycle from Thanington to work at Chartham, where he was a popular colleague and boss and a supporter of the hospital social club and sports teams.
When he took semi-retirement he played a major role in the reorganisation of the health service.
He became a voluntary escort and driver for Kent Social Services being always available to support social workers and foster parents with their more difficult cases and for longer drives.
In retirement, he lived in Sandwich Bay and Minnis Bay, where he was a keen supporter of Birchington’s twinning with La Chappelle d’armentières.
It was this contact that persuaded him and Pat to finally retire to central France, where they bought a tumbledown farmhouse and began renovating it. He died in France.
Roy leaves a widow, Pat, and three children, Jill, John and Nicholas.
Jill, now Stevens, worked as a journalist, first for the Kentish Gazette and later as editor of the Kent Messenger, before moving into consumer affairs.
A cremation has been held in France but a thanksgiving will take place on Sunday, August 21, at 12.30pm at Tottington Manor, Edburton, West Sussex.