Grandpa: an original Tommy

[jacey]

julesjones posted about Henry Allingham, Britain's oldest man, one of the three surviving WW1 veterans in the UK, and the last living founder member of the Royal Air Force, who turned 112 today. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7439117.stm

I followed her link and read up on the amazing Mr Allingham.

It made my think of my own grandfather who would have been Henry's contemporary and who went through most of the First World War in the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, being invalided out at Passchendale in 1917 with a leg injury that kept him in hospital for a year. He was a quiet man who always took the line of least resistance. Kind and gentle. Not academic, possibly due to lack of anything but basic schooling around the turn of the century. I never saw him read a book or write more than a shopping list or a very brief note in an awkward hand. The only book he ever owned was a very ancient, abused copy of Culpeper's Herbal, which I still have. I often wonder why he had that book. Had it belonged to a family member? Was it his only avenue of health care for the first fifty years of his life (pre NHS)?

After the First World War and his discharge form hospital (in Scotland for some reason) he returned home to Mapplewell in the West Riding of Yorkshire and went to work at the pit face at North Gawber Colliery. He married my gandma, Annie Shaw and my mum was born in 1925. He continued to work at North Gawber until his retirement in the mid 1950s. After retirement he bacame one of the first 'lollipop men' in Britain. (A schools crossing patrol officer, on duty to see children safely across the road at school time.)

Anyway here he is: Thomas Benett 1893 - 1977
In his KOYLI uniform. He made corporal eventually.


And a wedding pc. Thomas Bennett and Annie Shaw. Date? Around 1922 I think.


And then came Joan. It was quite unusual to have only one child in the 1920s I guess.



And when the Second World War came along he joined Dad's Army


He used to tell me tall tales of things that had happened to him in his youth - oh how I wish I'd written them down. I remember something about his best friend eating a pie that had been set on a windowsil to cool by a neighbour and being chased down the street by the angry piemaker... and the story of him and the same best friend catching a train to Pontefract barracks to join the army when war broke out.

Comments

[charlieallery.livejournal.com]

Wow, wonderful pictures. :) Yes, I think 1 child was unusual, both of my parents came from 4-child families in the 20s. I've never heard of either of my grandfathers serving in WWI, I shall have to check but one was a shipwright and I think merchant navy, which would have exempted him. Not sure about the other who was a wheelwright/coachbuilder. It's good that you remember some of the stories at least.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

You're quite a bit younger than me, I think, so your grandparents and parents may have been just the wrong age for both big wars. My grandpa caught the first one and my dad caught the second. He drove a tank across the Western Desert in the Ninth Queens Royal Lancers. He'd always wanted to fly but he failed to get into the RAF pilot training on a hearing test. (They later dropped the requirement but by that time it was too late, he was in the army and he learned to fly later - as a civilian.) My mum was in the NAAFI - having volunteered before she got 'called up' as a landgirl.

[charlieallery.livejournal.com]

I think I'm the 3rd generation of younger children from older parents. :) My father went into the RAF at 16 as a boy entrant because all he'd ever wanted to do was fly. That was in 1936. He was too young for pilot training so they gave him something useful to do for 2 years until he was 18. Unfortunately by that time he was a fully-trained photographer and far too valuable to lose to flying. It wasn't until 1940 when they were losing so many pilots that they told him he could apply for air crew training, but he couldn't apply specifically as a pilot and he'd have to accept whatever they decided he would train as. I think the odds are, since he'd already proved he had brains, he'd have been picked as a navigator and still not had the chance to be a pilot. He made the sensible decision to carry on as a photographer since he still got some flying time as a passenger.

His father would probably have been in his 30s in the 1910s, but he was a shipwright/ship's carpenter as I said, so probably fully employed keeping the merchant fleet sailing.

My mother was born in '28, so yes, she was still at school during WWII but her father also would have been in his 20s or 30s during the First War. I shall have to ask if she knows why he didn't get called up.

Neither of my parents talk much about their parents or their childhood so I've never enquired too deeply, though they're both happy enough for me to research the family tree.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Your dad was born before mine. Mine was born in 1923 and my mum in 1925. My mum left school during the second war - possibly earlier than she would have done if there hadn't been a war on because she got a scholarship to the High School yet never stayed on beyond the minimum leaving age - then fourteen I think - and went on to do various office-type book-keeping jobs all her life. I don't know whether she would have considered college had it not been for the war. I'm pretty sure she wasn't all that keen on school because she managed to get a job before she actually left (one that my grandparents didn't know about). It was when they found out that she'd been going to work instead of going to school that they finally gave her permission to leave officoally.

The generational thing is weird, isn't it. I have a semi-cousin in the USA who is in his seventies - possibly some 20 years older than me, yet his grandfather was the brother of my great-great-grandfather.

What's memory for him is history for me.