Basil William Kennett Denness was born in Ashford on 19 April 1919, the only son of Hubert Reynold Basil and Dorothy Denness. Although his father was a well-known Ashford sportsman, Football League referee and butcher, Basil was not drawn to sport... his passion was music. His sister, Daphne, was born in 1930.

After leaving South Central School in 1935, Basil joined the Royal Naval School of Music as a Boy Musician at the Depot, Deal, where he completed three years of training. He became an accomplished euphonium and cello player.

In November 1938, he was selected to play in the Royal Marines Band sent to Turkey for the state funeral procession of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first President of Turkey.

The Second World War soon changed the course of Basil’s service. Like many in the Band Service, he was used in roles far removed from those he had expected when he enlisted.

Basil initially served on the dreadnought battleship HMS Malaya. On 20th March 1941, while escorting Atlantic Convoy SL 68 west of the Cape Verde Islands, she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-106. The ship reached Port of Spain, Trinidad, under her own power for emergency repairs before arriving at Brooklyn Navy Yard on 6th April 1941. Entering dry dock on 12th April, HMS Malaya became the first British warship to undergo repairs in the United States during the Second World War. Basil wrote home describing the warm welcome the crew received from the Americans. After repairs and sea trials, HMS Malaya left New York Harbour on 9th July 1941.

Musician Denness saw action in several theatres of war and, at one point, served on the battleship HMS King George V.

On 1st April 1942, Basil married Miss Roselind Webster at All Saints' Church in her hometown of Scarborough. It is unclear how they met, although the connection may have come through the senior wing of the School of Music, then based at the Clifton Hotel.

Basil had hoped to spend his second wedding anniversary at home with his wife, but tragically this was not to be… Mr and Mrs Denness, of 124 Kingsnorth Road, Ashford, were notified that their son had been reported as missing presumed killed at sea, while serving aboard the corvette HMS Asphodel on 10th March 1944. The ship was escorting convoy SL 150 off Cape Finisterre, north-west Spain, when she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, which escaped soon afterwards. Many of the casualties were compounded by secondary hazards, as the vessel's own primed depth charges exploded as she foundered and survivors faced extensive bunker fuel contamination in the water. Musician Basil Denness was among ninety-two men lost in the sinking, with only five survivors. He was twenty-four years old.

The U-boat was sunk north of the Azores by Allied ships and aircraft three days later, on 13th March 1944. Basil has no grave but the sea, he is remembered with honour on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial in Southsea.

RIP Basil

In 1949, Basil’s eighteen-year-old sister Daphne married former German prisoner of war Heinz Meiner at Ashford Register Office, eight months after they were introduced.

Given Basil’s wartime service and tragic death, the marriage would likely have stirred strong feelings within the family and the wider community.

Meiner, then twenty-eight, had been a chef in Chemnitz, Saxony, before serving in the German Army. Captured in North Africa in 1943, he spent part of his captivity in America, before moving to Ashford to work on a farm after his release from a prisoner-of-war camp. Daphne, who worked in a local café, said, “We met at a dance at Ashford Corn Exchange. My husband is very popular with the people down there. He has been playing the drums at local dances.”

At Ashford magistrates’ court, Heinz said she had called him a “dirty filthy Nazi swine,”She slapped him across the face, and told him to keep away from her daughter. When he said he would report her to the police, she struck him across the head with the dog lead. He added, “I was waiting for my girl and walked away. Then I heard a car coming, it came straight at me and I had to jump into the ditch. Mrs Alice Randall was driving it.”

Mr Denness, Daphne’s father, called out from the body of the court, “Can I give evidence?” His request was refused. He then exclaimed, “What... when this girl is my daughter and Mrs Randall told me herself, she had tried to run Meiner down.” He was ordered to remain quiet.

Mrs Randall was fined £5.

Roselind later remarried and died in Glasgow in 2003, aged eighty-nine.