Geoffrey West
Mon, February 17, 2020 
East Woodhay School
The winter of 1944, approaching 1945 was a brutal and bitterly cold one across England and the rest of Europe. Those familiar with WWII history will know that. Allied Forces fought their way through France, Belgium and Holland to defeat Germany in the last six months of the war.
I was eight years old, soon to be nine, attending school in the little village of East Woodhay, Hampshire in the South of England. Geoffrey West was a classmate in school, we were about the same age. He was from a large family of eight or nine, his sister Dorothy West was in the same class.
His father used to cut my hair. Every month or so I would walk the three or four miles to his house, with a silver shilling, (The cost of a haircut.) clutched tightly in my hand. Sometime just after Christmas, 1944 Geoffrey went missing.
A police constable came to school to ask if anyone had seen him. Volunteers searched for at least two weeks, breaking ice, and dragging ponds. Then someone remembered that some Italian Prisoners of War had been clearing some trees in the nearby village of Ball Hill.
They had used a huge army bulldozer and a chain to uproot the trees, then cut the tree trunk near the root as the tree lay on the ground. There were no chainsaws back then, they would have used a two-man hand saw. It would have been a long process.
Out of a number of trees that had been brought down in this fashion and the trees had since been removed, all the roots stood upright, except for one that had flopped back into the hole. The bulldozer was brought back, and the root was pulled up again. There lay Geoffrey’s body.
What made him jump down into that hole? Who knows, but to an eight or nine-year-old boy when the ground opens up and you see a place where no man has been before who knows what treasures lay there just waiting to be picked up. He sees no danger, only adventure.
These are things I think of often, along with questions like, why do some have their lives cut short, while others go on to live their's to its full extent? And who even remembers Geoffrey West?
His family, his brothers and sisters, and a few classmates like me. I was reminded of this tragedy recently when I came across this video (Below.) which illustrates exactly what happened.
I hope that as well as memorializing Geoffrey West, I am making people aware. It is not my intention to place fear into the hearts of adventurous young boys, but to make them think of consequences, and of hidden dangers in life that one needs to be aware of.
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Reader Comments (7)
Thats sad, reminds me of a few people i knew who died young, either through illness, accidents or suicide.
Made me reflect on the course of my life, some people just not destined for old age!
Requiescat in pace. What is almost as striking in your story is the description of you as an 8 or 9 year old waling 4 miles for a haircut by yourself. I had almost as much freedom when I was 9 -- 1964, 20 years later; but today, I've seen families get into the SUV to drive 2 blocks to the park.
Keep up the posts, please.
A blogger I used to follow reckoned you had an expiry date stamped on your backside at birth. (He died not too long after posting that.)
Dave,
I've been following your blog for a while now and this is the first time I've felt compelled to comment. Your memory of an avoidable tragedy reminded me of a similar near miss. I served my entire military career in engineering units, on construction or disaster recovery projects around the world. Children in these places loved to watch us work when they could, and often don't appreciate danger or boundaries. Once we were rebuilding a bridge in Guatemala after Hurricane Mitch. One of the crew had parked a loaded dump truck and got out to work with the rest of us until we needed the fill he was hauling. When he went back to the truck, he heard voices, and climbed up to find two kids playing in the bed. Imagine if he hadn't checked, and dumped the children and ten tons of fill!
From that point on, we made it mandatory that every load gets checked before dumping.
It's a shame young Geoffrey lost his life that way, and those POWs were probably sickened about it, but nobody can think of what to look out for until an accident (or near miss) like that gives them reason to.
Thanks, and keep up the good work
Is there some kind of optical illusion here? The man with the chainsaw appears to be at least 5 feet up the trunk from the location of the cut that released the roots. You can see this after the roots fall - he puts the saw blade under the trunk and you can see a little shadow in that spot.
Jon Blum,
It is not an illusion, the man has cut almost through the trunk near the root and has moved five feet further up to cut from the bottom up to avoid the cut from pinching and trapping the saw blade.
But the first cut unintentionally breaks, causing the trunk to fall and the root to flop back into the hole.
The man then continues the cut from the bottom up.
Dave
Good story Dave, You should write a book!!! I too remember the storms that year not as bad as yours, paled a little with the war still on, In 1944 I was 11 taking exams and making decisions that could and did affect my future life, had I taken a tech school, instead of Moseley School of Art how very different my life could have been? Life is full off "WHAT IFFS" I guess. But at least I was able to contribute to the history of Birmingham England, having helped, carving several coats of arms and statues "Three Golden Boys" etc when working for William Bloye the sculptor. Maybe I would have been a Tech geek? Thinking back to your comment "Who do some have their lives cut short?" This is a question I also have asked myself many many times..In November 1940 A German bomb landed a half block from our home. killing two young friends and their parents, A very close call, blew out all our taped windows (remember that?) shook the Anderson shelter (that Dad built), we were in, in the garden. A Gust of wind, or a second later, the finger on the bomb release switch, in the Heinkel bomber Scary, to even think about it. Believe in GOD? good question HUH!