Shingle Street Investigation

The following items are excerpts from emails received from readers of this website.
Many thanks to all those who have contributed

Dear Sir
My father who died in 2001 was in the Royal Navy from 1938 to 1945 and told me that one night in 1940 shortly after Dunkirk at Chatham Naval Base they were woken up and told to get ready and that the German Invasion was on and he along with the other Sailors were stood to all night. He was not a man to lie or make mistakes like that ,he was very sure, sorry i cannot add more but i never forgot him telling me that.
Ken Lee, March 2006

Hi Gary I have been interested in this for quite some time now and have looked at your site with some interest. I wonder, did you ever get any sort of response from Parliment or from the secret service? I somehow doubt it!! I have a friend at work who's mother used to live in that area at the time and I will ask to see if there is any further information I can add for you.
Steve, April 2006

Hi Steve Thanks for your email and for your interest in the web site. No- we never heard anything from parliament or the military, although the Sky TV programme about the Shingle Street conspiracy was delayed for several monthes before they were eventually allowed to show it. Coincidence perhaps but this would have allowed ample time for any official censorship. We would be interested to hear anything you can find out! Best regards Gary

Attention to Ronald Ashford Aldeburgh- Suffolk
Sir, I read what online on your site about channel on fire. If it's of any interest to you I can mail - surface mail - a copy of a sort of book written by an american historical reasercher. He was unable to have it printed in the US. It's a long story and due to my poor english I'm unable to tell all about. Thank you for reading. Enrico (Cappelletti) journalist from Italy. May 2006

Hello Gary, here is the book Mr Hill from somewhere in the Us send me last year. I do know personally Mr Hill but we had a long email exchange for the last two years. Two nights ago I saw finally him on History Channel about a documentary called Conspirancy about Pearl harbour. I know he had a lot of trouble with that book and the one I'm sending to you. I know that the "channel" it's a sort of story that it shouldn't come up. We have relatives in England leaving in Ipswich and nearby. My wife's aunt married an english soldier just before the end of the war and we have two cousing half italian. I spend sometime around Suffolk two years ago. Hope to come over before september again. I hope this little book could help and in case I can give you Mr Hill email address. Best regards enrico

Gary:

Attached is a piece (in PDF format) which I began compiling about 1980. I have but one anecdotal confirmation, from a British woman who worked in intelligence during the war, in the defense of Britain. She stated that the only thing she regretted, in her work, was when they set the sea on fire.

I believe my friend Enrico Capoletti may already have contacted you about my monograph.
Yours,
Charles N. Hill, author of Fix on the Rising Sun (www.hawaiiclipper.com).

Dear Mr Ashford,
I have been very interested in your site on Shingle Street. I used to go
there for Sunday afternoon teas back in the '50s. Lovely home made breads
and cakes and those fork-tailed terns fluttering overhead. The place had
such an air of innocence and as I shuffled through the shingle had no idea
of all that had taken place here.
I am, on occasions, a visitor to the forest and there is told that there are
hundreds of German soldiers buried there, their mass burial ground marked by
a plantation of silver birch, somewhere.
I feel that you would know the truth of this or whether it is rumour to give
more 'colour' to the stories connected to the forest.
I would greatly appreciate your comments on this and await you reply with
interest.
Yours sincerely, Audrey Counsell July 2006

Thank you for your letter of the 27th. Since my early investigation much has been revealed, the enemy landing was mainly destroyed by a sea of fire we had laid down in two vulnerable areas; Shingle Street on the Suffolk coast and Hunstanton on the Norfolk coast (never activated).
Some four hundred of Hitler’s best troops reached the shore and a fire fight ensued for nine hours destroying the life boat inn and some half dozen properties.
The secrecy act is in force until 2021 in order to protect the political traitors and royalty who were involved. I have received by letter and by phone much support, and my uncle, Victor Sammons who was a high profile civil servant in the Chamberlain government during the thirties and Winston Churchill’s war cabinet. My family was sworn to secrecy owing to the information we were told.
As stated on the website I was a first hand witness of the events at Shingle Street whilst I was a member of the Local Defence Volunteers, patrolling along the Aldeburgh coast.
I am the last survivor of our platoon of thirty six men.
Four attempts were made to neutralise us; Hitler was desperate not to have to fight on two fronts. His plans to invade Russia were well advanced by this stage.

Stage 1. The peace agreement .
Stage 2. The Shingle Street landing.
Stage 3. Hitler’s deputy; Hess sent to join the Duke of Hamilton and Duke of Kent (the Queen’s uncle) to fly to the British Legation in Switzerland to negotiate a peace agreement. Hess was captured whilst the two dukes took off only to crash on the Isle of Mull.
Stage 4. The massive raid on London on the 29th of December which destroyed much of the centre of London. Hitler was sure we would sue for peace but the raid had the opposite effect and it strengthened our resolve. As Churchill said at the time; “they have sown the wind, now we will sow the whirlwind”.

History up to now has been denied the truth. It will be exposed one day and I have done my best to help expose the truth.
If you visit the Ipswich Records Office in Gatacre Road, Ipswich and ask for folders entitled “The Secret War at Shingle Street”, deposit numbers 12385HD2061, these will give you details of my full investigation and letters from the public.

Sincerely
Ronald Ashford.

Hi Gary,
Thankyou very much for the trouble you went to. The information is very
interesting. I hadn't known about Hunstanton.
Where the bodies were buried is something that has to come out sooner or
later.
Our soldiers are in well kept graves on the Continent and if I was a German
member of a family whose brother, father, son, had died in this way then I
would want to know where they were buried.It's just a human thing to do.
I am so glad that your father is keeping this in the public arena so thank
him from me...
All the best....Audrey

Dear Ronald

After visiting Shingle Street & holidaying their several times I am
returning to The Lifeboat House this Summer with my children. While
searching the web one day - for "things to do with kids" in Suffolk etc - I
came across your site, and what an amazingly interesting site it is. How
fascinating to learn of the potential change in British History if the
Germans had been able to land.
I wondered the following as the site hadn't been unpdated since August 2005
the following?
Did you get any response from Stella Remington re your letter last year?
Do you know if the August 2005 documentary will be repeated?
Are there any other soldiers who have remembered & written to you?

Many thanks
Laura Sutton July 2006

Dear Gary/Ronald

Many thanks for all your interesting info. We are off to Shingle Street on
Saturday & are staying in the Lifeboat House - not the original I know -
near the Martello Tower. My kids are so interested in all the history and
your story that we are going to visit the records office in Ipswich to look
up all the info.

All the best

Laura Sutton

Hi there ,
I am very interested in the events that surround shingle street ,when my father died I found references to shingle street which would be of interest to yourself , I will be only to happy to meet you and show you references to events that took place . I am not to far away to meet up a converse with your self .I live near SUDBURY in suffolk .
Hoping I can be of help
MIKE July 2006

When I was a teenager in Sussex I knew a clergyman, a family friend, the Rev'd P. Lethbridge, who had been Chaplain at Hollesley Bay Borstal during the war years. He used to talk about the 1940 events at Shingle Street with similar details to those you describe on your website.

Towards the end of his life he also told me he had seen several lorry-loads of dead bodies wearing field grey uniform. i.e. presumably German soldiers, bound and bundled together, being driven through the Borstal grounds on the day after the sea 'caught fire'.

Since he and all the Borstal staff had been bound to secrecy about these events he was uneasy talking about this, but believed that his eye-witness account should not be lost.

I hope this detail adds something to your researches,

Yours,
David Newton, Chelmondiston, Suffolk. Sept 2006

Dear Sir,
Being a Norfolk man born and bred, i watch with interest what our 'neighbours' in Suffolk get up to !!! I have been a keen follower of the Shingle Street website for some years now. My late grandfather, who was in the Royal Engineers in WW2, often told me of the 'Sea of Fire' defence plan. He spent the majority of his post war years working for Shell in the Petroleum industry and told me of similar pipelines to the ones at Shingle Street that ran out to sea from Shell Haven, on the Thames Estuary. My Grandmother however, worked for 'The other side' during WW2. She is from Austria and was conscripted, along with her brother, at the begining of WW2. She served as a morse operator in the Luftwaffe (obviously ground based, very much like our Royal Corps of Signals) She has often told me that the German forces were told of how their 'Brave and courageous troops' attempted a commando raid on the East Coast, but were burned alive by the 'Cowardly, murderous British'. She said that it wasn't a secret and quite openly talked about. Anyway, i hope that this might be of some interest to you,
regards, Kurt Mills.    Oct 2006