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The Cambell Brothers
DRFC was the eldest of four children born to a doctor's family in Southsea. His younger siblings were Neville (born 1911), Katharine (born 1913), and Brian (born 1919).
Katharine went to Girton College, Cambridge University where she was awarded an honours degree in Modern Languages. This was an impressive achievement as the number of women going into higher education in the 1930s was little over two thousand annually across the UK, and less than 100 obtaining a place at Girton.
All three boys joined the navy as is evidenced in this photograph from the early 1930s: Neville (left) then a Sub-Lieutenant, Brian (centre) then a cadet and DRFC then a Lieutenant. All three were to serve with distinction in the Fleet Air Arm.
Neville flying a Swordfish from Hal Far, Malta was shot down and captured on 6 May 1941, and spent the rest of the war as a Prisoner of War. His subsequent work in sending back valuable coded messages to the U.K. from assorted P.O.W. camps in Italy and Germany resulted in the award of an M.B.E. He retired from the Royal Navy in 1959.
On 25th May 1941, just three weeks after Neville was captured, Brian flying a Fulmar from HMS Victorious on a mission against the Panzerschiff Bismark was shot down and killed aged just 22.
Katharine's memories of her brothers
"Dennis
saved up his sub-lieutenant's pay in order to take lessons in flying at the Hamble, at a time when flying in a moth was very unusual. I've always felt that his going to Westminster rather than Dartmouth is why he was so sophisticated and always socialised so well. I didn't appreciate his oil paintings but have always admired to the point of envy his great ability to draw. Certain aspects of my Dad's character came out very strongly in him. To my shame I used to boast about him dreadfully at the Portsmouth High School! He had a very happy late teens and early twenties, I think, (marred only by the loss of a pretty little Cairns whom he got as a puppy but who died of distemper when it was nine months old. It upset him considerably). I always admired Dennis immensely."
"Neville
as a small boy was made a boarder at a nearby prep school because my father got very tired of dragging a reluctant child to school everyday. Neville was always very supportive and caring for me. I remember him upturning the large nursery table to make the wings for me to emerge from as though on a stage. His interest in acting remained with him and while a prisoner of war in Germany he put on a number of successful productions, mostly of farces which were popular at the time. He said that as a POW he was happier in Germany than in Italy, because though it was a stricter regime you knew where you were while in Italy the guards could be very friendly one minute and very unpredictable the next. On one occasion, he said, when he was playing patience he deliberately didn't put a card where he could see it would go enticing the guard who was watching to play it for him. Here, hold on to my rifle for a moment, said the guard, which Neville was happy to do! He felt this would never have occurred in Germany. I have always felt that it was thanks to him and the nursery acting that I have always been so engrossed in acting throughout my life. Neville's relationship with my father went through some bad patches which he in later life much regretted. As Neville believed in an after-life he felt he would have to answer to my father later for his behaviour."
"As Brian
was six years younger than me I didn't have a lot of contact with him. My last memory of him was when we were living in Clifton Hill, St John's Wood, he came to see us and we went for a walk in Regents Park. Rob* was two or three at the time and Robert and I believed in under dressing him rather than wrapping him in a lot of clothes, so although it was quite a chilly day Rob had only a thin shirt on. Brian told Mum afterwards that Rob was being experimented on. It doesn't seem to have harmed him. He's always been very healthy! I remember clearly Brian's head of thick curly red hair and his freckled face. He was very good-looking. He was the apple of Mum's eye, her favourite offspring, and Neville once said to me that, however awful his death was for Mum, it spared her the time which was imminent of Brian having less time for her and more for his girl friends."
[* Rob is Katharine's son, Robert was his father.]
Neville
Katharine
in January 1994.
