Photograph of Major General Scott is from 'The Royal Corps of Signals: a history of its antecedents and development (circa 1800-1955)' by R.F.H. Nalder, 1958

William Arthur & Dulcie Scott lived in Budleigh Salterton from about 1938 to 1976 when he died. He was away on active service or government business for some of this time. Lady Dulcie stayed in the town after his death for a number of years, living at 16 Upper Stoneborough Lane before moving to Gloucestershire.

William Arthur Scott was born in Plymouth in 1899 the third son of Herbert Scott, a metal and silver engraver, and his wife Jane. They lived at 18 Abingdon Road. He joined the Royal Engineers Signal Service toward the end of WW1 as a Second Lieutenant and was promoted to Lieutenant in March 1919, by which time he appears to have been in India (1). The RE Signal Service became the Royal Corp of Signals in August 1920 and the Indian Signal Corps was also set up in 1920 with British officers and ranks from the Royal Corps of Signals working alongside Indian Signallers. Scott was involved in the Waziristan Campaign from January 1922 to April 1923 and received an MBE for valuable services rendered in the field.

He returned to England temporarily in June 1924 but was back in India by 1927 where he married Dulcie Gertrude Buchanan at Simla on the 24th August. Dulcie had been born in Simla in 1901 and her father was for 30 years the water and drainage engineer for the Simla Municipality and was a descendant of a long line of Scottish civil engineers. Dulcie’s mother was Laura Kate Carson who had been born in Madras.

Scott returned to Plymouth to 18 Abingdon Road on board the City of Simla in April 1929 accompanied by Silvia Mary Scott aged 27 and a child Dulcie aged 1. Who Silvia and Dulcie were is a mystery although the fact that the child was called Ducie suggests a close relationship to William and his wife Dulcie. Silvia was not recorded in the ship’s register as his wife so its possible the child was hers and she was an in-law. It was recorded that all 3 intended to return to India.

He was promoted to Captain in September 1928 and by 1933 was back in England as the Adjutant at the Royal Corps of Signals barracks at Scarborough. He had returned to India by February 1936 and was a General Staff Officer, 2nd Grade, acting as Staff Officer to the Signals Officer in Chief, and was promoted to Major in September 1937. He appears in the Telephone Directory for Budleigh Salterton in 1938 as Captain WA Scott at Moorlands, Links Road and I suspect this is because the listing was correct at the time the Directory was compiled the previous year probably before his promotion. He must have returned to England some time in 1938 because in June the executors of Mrs E A Brown sold the contents of Greenlands, 2 Copplestone Road and presumably the house was sold (2). The Scotts may have bought it because Major W A Scott is listed in the telephone directory at the address from 1941 to 1944 where Dulcie would presumably have lived while her husband was on active service during WW2.

William had an very active war. At the outbreak he was General Staff Officer Grade 1 at the War Office and in May 1940 was in France as Commanding Officer Beauman Divisional Signals. This was apparently a very motley ill-equiped unit which did it’s best in difficult circumstances ( 3).
In 1941 he was initially General Staff Officer Grade 1 at Eastern Command and in October was made a temporary Lieutenant Colonel and became Chief Signal Officer (CSO) for 1st Armoured Group, the appointment lasting until 1943. The Group was in North Africa and he had an additional post from 1942-3 as Deputy CSO, Allied Force Headquarters, moving later in 1943 to the same job with 18th Army Group. One of his jobs before the British-American invasion of French North Africa during the North African Campaign (Operation Torch which started on 8 November 1942), was to liaise with the Americans  regarding communication facilities available for the press and radio. It was decided at a meeting at Norfolk House on 30th September to use Radio Algiers to transmit to the BBC and thence across to New York for re-transmissions by the networks and for voice-casts to the press associations so that the British and American publics could hear radio reports direct from allied HQ (4).

When the war moved to Italy in 1943 he took on the same role (Deputy CSO) with 15th Army Group. In February of 1943 he had been appointed as a Temporary Brigadier and was promoted full Lieutenant Colonel in May 1943.
In August 1943 he was awarded a CBE for his services  and later in November he was back at the War Office in London as Deputy Director of Signals (Organisation). He saw out most of the remainder of the war from 1944 to 1945 as Chief Signals Officer for the 8th Army in Italy. In 1944 he was in Sicily and was mentioned in dispatches for meritorious service. In 1945 the Americans created him a Commander of their Legion of Merit for his services.

At the end of the war he was a Colonel but initially retained his rank of temporary Brigadier, and from 1946-7 he was CSO for the occupying British troops in Austria.

He returned to England and was employed between 1947 and 1948 as CSO, Southern Command. He was promoted to Major-General and moved to become Director of Signals at the War Office in 1949, and from 1952 was, for three years, Director of Weapons Development at the War Office. In that capacity he travelled to Washington in April 1955 to confer with the Americans on exchanging information about guided missiles (5).

He became Colonel Commandant of the Royal Corps of Signals in January 1954 retaining the post until 1970. He retired from the Army in 1955 but in August was made Honorary Colonel of a Territorial Army Unit.
In 1957 he became Director of Communications for the Foreign Office and, amongst other duties,flew to Singapore to meet local commanders there and in Malaya (6).

In the New Years Honours List of 1950 he had become a Companion of the Bath (CB) and in the New Years Honours List in 1959 (7) he was created Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (KCMG).

By 1946 the Scotts had moved from Copplestone Road to live at Stapleton in West Hill Lane through to his death in 1976. Afterwards Lady Dulcie moved to 16 Upper Stoneborough Lane.

Lady Dulcie, as stated earlier, was born in India but after the birth of her brother Colin (later Sir Colin Douglas Buchanan) their mother brought both children back to Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire. Dulcie returned to India at some stage where she married William in 1927. At the end of the 1930s when she and her husband were taking up residence in Budleigh her brother was living in Pinhoe working for the Ministry of Transport in Exeter. He was responsible for upgrading many of the trunk roads in the South West (1937-9). In 1972 he was knighted for his work producing the Buchanan Report (1963) which became a blueprint for urban redevelopment for several years, and later he was on the Roskill Commission (1968-70) reporting on possible sites for a third airport for London.

Lady Dulcie was a keen gardener and became President of the Budleigh Salterton Flower Shows Society. She obviously had an interest in growing fruit because she won the Hawkes-Cornock Cup at the Summer Show in 1947 (given for the most points won for fruit), and then again from 1962-8 and from 1972-1975. She never subsequently won it and I suspect this was due to her move to Upper Stoneborough Lane to a very different garden. She also won the Warreleigh Challenge Cup for the greatest number of points during the year  in 1956, 1961, and 1967 & 8, with her main competitor being the Rosemullion Hotel which had numerous successes between 1953 and 1970; she then won again for the three years 1973-5. She also on one occassion in 1979 won the Leach Cup for the best vegetable entry at the autumn show. She left Budleigh around 1994  and moved to the Cotswolds. She donated a silver cup to be won each year by the best entry in the Show in any of the flower, fruit or vegetable classes; this was first won in 1995.  She died at Mickleton on the 29 August 2002 at the age of 101.

Researched and Written by © Roger Lendon June 2016

(1) Most of the information on his military career is taken from:www.forces-war-records.co.uk/records, & for WW2 from: www.generals.dk/general/Scott/ William_Arthur/Great_Britain.html
(2) Exeter & Plymouth Gazette 10 June 1938
(3) The BEF in France 1939-1940: Manning the front through to the Dunkirk evacuation  By John Grehan & Martin Mace  2014 Pen & Sword Military Books
(4) My three years with Eisenhower, 1942-1945, By Captain Harry C. Butcher. New York: Simon and Schuster:1946 page 126
(5) Saturday 16 April 1955, Northern Whig, Antrim, Northern Ireland
(6) The Straits Times, 3 April 1957, Page 7
(7) www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/36120/supplement/3522

Biography BS-B-00075