Selworthy Roll of Honour

Acting Lieutenant Marcus David Donati

Officer Cadet John Allan Pilcher

Able Seaman Philip Thomas Davis was one of three brothers who were killed in the war (also Walter James Bailey Davis, below and John Davis, Porlock.) In September 1943, Philip Davis was a gunner on board a merchant vessel, the MV Larchbank, transporting war supplies to India when she was sunk by a Japanese submarine in the Indian Ocean. He was 21 years old.

Private Walter James Bailey Davis was serving with the Black Watch, the Royal Highland Regiment, in Italy as they pushed north against the massed German defences in the Apennines. He was killed in action in October 1944, aged 24.

Acting Lieutenant Marcus David Donati was a pilot with the Fleet Air Arm. In January 1941 he was in a contingent of pilots and air crew sailing west to a Caribbean training base on HMS Almeda Star when she was sunk by a German submarine off Rockall in the Western Isles. He was 25.

Company Sergeant James Farmer (known as Jim) served with the Selworthy platoon of the 1st Somerset (Minehead) Battalion of the Home Guard. In December 1941 the platoon was being trained at their Holnicote base in the use of a Thompson submachine gun when the gun fired accidentally, wounding Farmer in the upper leg. He died of his injuries at Minehead hospital, aged 41.

Sergeant Wilfred Lawrence Creech Hill served with 5th Battalion, the Seaforth Highlanders. In February 1945, as Allied forces advanced into Germany, Sergeant Hill was killed in intense fighting in the Reichswald Forest, aged 29.

Private William Gordon McGowan enlisted with the Somerset Light Infantry in early 1940 but within five months, still in England, he was killed when a pile of sandbags he was stacking with colleagues collapsed upon him. He was just 20. (Also named on Porlock War Memorial.)

Officer Cadet John Allan Pilcher served with the Grenadier Guards. In January 1941, Pilcher was in his room at the Military College at Sandhurst, when a German bomber heading home after a raid offloaded its bombs on the college, killing Pilcher and four other cadets. He was also just 20 years old.

Private William John Robins was a private with the Porlock platoon of the 1st Somerset (Minehead) Battalion of the Home Guard. In February 1941, cycling home to Bossington after a Sunday morning drill in Porlock, Robins collided with a car, suffering severe internal bleeding. He died at Minehead hospital the following evening. He was 30.