EPSOM PILLBOX UNCOVERED

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: july/august 2020 :: RMTnews 24 There are many remaining Second World War defences scattered around our railways that transport workers pass every day at work including the humble pill box. In the event of a German invasion it was obvious that the Nazis would seek to make advances inland using the fastest and most level routes. Rail tracks would have been of huge strategic importance. Much of what is still standing is well documented with its historic significance eight decades on from the invasion that never happened noted, maintained and protected. It is rare to find an extant but unrecorded defensive pillbox hiding in plain sight. Particularly bang, smack alongside a busy suburban commuter rail line. Idly waiting at a red signal for a Southern service out of Victoria to roll into an available platform at Epsom I was looking out of the window to the left and was surprised to see the tell- tale angled mouth of a machine gun opening staring back at me through the ivy. I had just enough time to grab a picture on my phone before the brakes were released and we headed off. Like my RMT colleague and RMT News editor Brian Denny, I am something of an amateur historian with an interest in military installations and I ran the pictures past one of the leading members of the Pillbox Study Group who checked the records and found that this particular box was undocumented and absent from the records although it would have formed part of the well- mapped Outer London Defence Ring. He also identified it as an FW3 pillbox. The Outer London Defence Ring had been constructed soon after the start of the Second World War. It was part of a series of defences designed to slow down an enemy advance on the capital from the expected attack on the south coast after the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force and their evacuation from Dunkirk. The fascists were planning to establish beachheads from Dover along the south coast and then head up across the South Downs with the route through the Dorking Gap and up through Epsom and onto London of huge military significance. Hence why the area remains dotted with pillboxes and other defensive installations. Mainly thanks to the success of the RAF in the Battle of Britain, and a strategic decision by Hitler to switch his focus to the Eastern Front, plans for the assault across the English Channel, Operation Sea Lion, were shelved and a decision had T H E D E F E AT O F F A S C I S M - 7 5 Y E A R S EPSOM PILLBOX UNCOVERED RMT press officer Geoff Martin makes a rare find, a hitherto forgotten military structure dating from World War Two