Remembering the Conchies – men banged up for opposing ‘unjust’ war

Amore decent, Christian and braver man I have yet to meet.” So says Simon Dell, describing his Great Uncle Harry. It may surprise some to learn that Simon’s forebear – Henry George “Harry” Dell to give him his full title – was a conscientious objector during the First World War.

Known disparagingly as “conchies”, those who refused to “fight for king and country” suffered verbal and physical abuse, were shunned by their communities, and locked up in their thousands. All for refusing – on religious, moral or political grounds – to take up arms against their fellow man.

In our more enlightened times, the motives of conchies is better understood – yet many continue to consider the men who refused to kill as somehow lesser than those who fought on the Western Front or at Gallipoli or the Battle of Jutland.

Simon, a retired police officer who served in the Devon and Cornwall force for 41 years, is today a well-known Westcountry author and public speaker whose books mostly concentrate on the social history of the South West. Having been close to Great Uncle Harry, Simon was keen to put the record straight about conscientious objectors by focusing on the experience of the more than 1,000 men interned in Dartmoor Prison between 1917 and 1919. The result is The Dartmoor Conchies: Dartmoor Prison’s Conscientious Objectors of The Great War, a detailed account of three extraordinary years in the life of an institution that came to be known, for the duration, as The Princetown Work Centre. It was there that men who refused to fight were put to work. Ostensibly labelled “in the national” interest, their labours were criticised (even in the pages of the Western Morning News at the time) for being solely to benefit the Duchy of Cornwall. Remaining incarcerated well after the war ended, work parties dug and barrowed untold amounts of earth and stone in a project aimed at reclaiming a vast area of moorland for agricultural use. Their memorial is a walled enclosure known as Conchies Field and a “road to nowhere” dubbed Conchie Road.

Simon, who grew up in Appledore and now lives in Tavistock, explained his motivation for writing the book.

“I was aware of my family connection and I knew Uncle Harry well; he was a delightful man,” he said. “I thought this was a story that should be told. It’s part of Dartmoor’s heritage. Their story is a very emotive one because some will say they were to be admired for sticking to their morals and principles whilst others will condemn their behaviour as cowardly and selfish – I don’t propose to get into that debate. What can be said is that these men have literally made their marks on the Dartmoor landscape and in its history. They were, without doubt, men of immense conscience, willing to stand up and risk being shot for their principles, whether religious, political or simply humanitarian. I wanted to speak for men now unable to do so, in order to set the record straight.”

Earlier this month, a group of Devon Quakers and members of Devon Remembers held a silent vigil in Princetown Square, followed by a walk to the gate leading out on to Conchie Road, near Tor Royal. A memorial plaque was unveiled by Margaret Punter, the daughter of Edward Ashby, one of the conscientious Margaret Punter (left) and Laura Fox at the unveiling of a plaque to Dartmoor Prison’s conscientious objectors

objectors held at The Princetown Work Centre in 1918, who married Isobel Worth, the daughter of a prison officer.

Chatting over a coffee this week, Simon is keen to return to the subject of his Great Uncle Harry.

“He was a man of great conscience and a true soldier of Christ,” said Simon. “He declared his conscientious objection and endured a tribunal, volunteering for the Royal Army Medical

Corps. He spent ‘his war’ carrying his chosen ‘weapons’ – a crucifix, a Bible, a Red Cross armband and a first aid kit.

“And his duty to his fellow man didn’t end there; during the Second World War Harry witnessed the unspeakable horrors of Changi Prison and the suffering of the victims of the Burma ‘death railway’. At the end of the war he refused to be repatriated until he was able to nurse back to health the last man capable of undertaking the journey home.

“A more decent, Christian and braver man I have yet to meet.”

Simon Parker meets historian Simon Dell whose book about Dartmoor Prison sets the record straight about the conscientious objectors locked up there in WWI