Appeal for wartime information

I am carrying out some research relating to World War Two and I wonder if any of your readers in the Chichester area may be able to help with information.

Admittedly it's a long shot, given the passage of time (83 years) and the fact that the events in question took place at the opposite end of the UK mainland, but I will summarise the key details in the faint hope that they may generate a response.

I live in Wick, in the far north of Scotland. I'm a member of a voluntary group that created a memorial garden commemorating the victims of two air raids on our town in 1940 and is responsible for maintaining it, and

I'm gathering as much historical information as I can.

In one of these raids, on the evening of October 26th 1940, the target was RAF Wick, a busy Coastal Command base that had taken on extra importance after the Germans occupied Norway in April of that year. Dorothy Ivy Dyer – the 19-year-old wife of an RAF serviceman,

Sgt Harold Cecil Dyer – was at that time lodging with the Cameron family at their bungalow in Hill Avenue, Wick, close to the aerodrome.

Sadly, Mrs Dyer was killed when the house took a direct hit that night. Two of the three Cameron children also lost their lives.

As far as I know, Dorothy was born in April 1921 in

Chichester.

Her father was Harry Ryder and her mother may have been Harriet Florence Elizabeth Kimber (1900-1980). I understand Dorothy and Harold were married in Chichester in October 1939.

Interestingly, while official records, including her death certificate, give her name as Dorothy, the name on her gravestone in Wick cemetery (alongside the Cameron graves) is Daphne.

If any descendants of the Ryder or Dyer families still live in the Chichester area and see this request, I would be grateful for any snippets of information that might shed more light on Dorothy's early life and also what might have happened to Harold after the sad loss of his teenage bride. My email address is alan.hendry@hnmedia. co.uk