My father chose to fight for his country 2026 4 10
which is to say he needn't have volunteered, aged 35, with a wife and two young boys, aged 2 and 3, his father Catholic Irish, his mother of Orange Order Northern Irish extraction, and he already working in a job which was vital for the UK's war against Hitler's Germany.
Suffice then to say he volunteered because of a misplaced idealism: all his younger brothers-in-law had already joined up: Frank Wall serving in Italy, Eddie, my wife's elder sibling, elsewhere over seas, young George in Egypt, only the older Bob, in the same age group, remaining home not yet called up because of his similar age, or possibly a year older?
But 4 years on, en route to the Japanese theatre of war, stationed in Canberra Australia, and presumably deemed to being A1, in health, before his embarcation, he had contracted Leukemia, which swept him away in record time, of only a few weeks or months, certainly not a time measured in years.
As a budding Chemist, by prpofession, I thought he may have inadvertently got a fatal dose of radiation, which might possibly explain the reason for his untimely death, aged 39 on August 4th 1945, but no matter.
For the war office wrote our mother a short time after his death, to say there would be no War Widow's Pension for her, since her husband had died from natural causes.
Who can now tell to what my father's idealism derived? The fact that his father was in all probability a Roman Catholic, like his paternal grandfather, coming to England to live from Dublin, during the Irish Famine of the 1840s to 1850s, but his mother who survived his death, can be understood to resent his drinking. My father aged 8 at the time of his father's death was famously quoted as saying: "Now my mother won't have to buy him any more beer."
Especially since she was also survived by her Irish father from the North of Ireland of the noteable Orange Order.
Now I don't know was my father like me or was he more like my elder brother in terms of handling himself in a fight? Certainly my elder brother had the reputation at our Primary and Secondary schools for always being able to handle himself, to the extent that no-one ever messed with him. I on the other hand was always getting into scraps: on my first day at school aged 4 1/2, this kid come my first play-time thought he would acquaint me with the rules of the Playground. George Hardman was his name, later known as being from a family of male boxers: his elder brother Bob in the same year as my elder brother, his younger brother John in the sam class as I was, meaning George was in the year above, already having served one year before I arrived. So anyway I didn't take kindly to George's initiative, so instead of taking what he said on board, I gave him my best punch, a right-hander, into his stomach, then I hoofed it off home maybe a distance of 1/2 mile to tell our Mam all about it. Later in life George would get expelled for hitting one of our teachers, a Mr Shilton from the Junior Technical School we all three of us later attended. Though as far as I can remember, he never messed with me again, after that first day in Primary school.
Jim our dad joined the Royal Marines, again as a volunteer, but his unit I believe was the Royal Marine Engineers, so he got to build lots of huts for WRENS to work in, for example and I never heard of him progressing beyond the rank of Private. Similarly his elder son, Jim Junior, never sought any job of leadership, and always deferred ppl to me, when he was asked where he had been walking, on which mountain, when we oftimes climbed together on Scotland's Monro hills.
Mmaybe in an analogous way, when the Minister of War wrote to our Mam, after our dad's demise, she didn't take it as read, but she took the Crown to Court with the assistance of the British Legion, a Veterans' Association. From one court after another during the following 2 years, when it came before Lord Justice Jennings, the Appeal Judge who one day would become the Master of the Rolls as Britain's premier Judge.
In one of the earlier courts the Crown Lawyer was reputed to have said to our mother:"You can't prove that your husband did't die from natural causes!" when she rounded on him with the words, "And you can't prove that he did!". When during the appeal they came to consider the evidence from the earlier procedings, Tom Denning said it was not our mother's job to prove anything but that it was incumbent upon the Crown to prove any suppositions, awarding our Mam her pension on a point of law!!
So maybe I got to inherit my fighter genes from my Mam rather than from my Dad which at the same time could well be the reaon and same person I inherited my leadership skills, lol
Suffice then to say he volunteered because of a misplaced idealism: all his younger brothers-in-law had already joined up: Frank Wall serving in Italy, Eddie, my wife's elder sibling, elsewhere over seas, young George in Egypt, only the older Bob, in the same age group, remaining home not yet called up because of his similar age, or possibly a year older?
But 4 years on, en route to the Japanese theatre of war, stationed in Canberra Australia, and presumably deemed to being A1, in health, before his embarcation, he had contracted Leukemia, which swept him away in record time, of only a few weeks or months, certainly not a time measured in years.
As a budding Chemist, by prpofession, I thought he may have inadvertently got a fatal dose of radiation, which might possibly explain the reason for his untimely death, aged 39 on August 4th 1945, but no matter.
For the war office wrote our mother a short time after his death, to say there would be no War Widow's Pension for her, since her husband had died from natural causes.
Who can now tell to what my father's idealism derived? The fact that his father was in all probability a Roman Catholic, like his paternal grandfather, coming to England to live from Dublin, during the Irish Famine of the 1840s to 1850s, but his mother who survived his death, can be understood to resent his drinking. My father aged 8 at the time of his father's death was famously quoted as saying: "Now my mother won't have to buy him any more beer."
Especially since she was also survived by her Irish father from the North of Ireland of the noteable Orange Order.
Now I don't know was my father like me or was he more like my elder brother in terms of handling himself in a fight? Certainly my elder brother had the reputation at our Primary and Secondary schools for always being able to handle himself, to the extent that no-one ever messed with him. I on the other hand was always getting into scraps: on my first day at school aged 4 1/2, this kid come my first play-time thought he would acquaint me with the rules of the Playground. George Hardman was his name, later known as being from a family of male boxers: his elder brother Bob in the same year as my elder brother, his younger brother John in the sam class as I was, meaning George was in the year above, already having served one year before I arrived. So anyway I didn't take kindly to George's initiative, so instead of taking what he said on board, I gave him my best punch, a right-hander, into his stomach, then I hoofed it off home maybe a distance of 1/2 mile to tell our Mam all about it. Later in life George would get expelled for hitting one of our teachers, a Mr Shilton from the Junior Technical School we all three of us later attended. Though as far as I can remember, he never messed with me again, after that first day in Primary school.
Jim our dad joined the Royal Marines, again as a volunteer, but his unit I believe was the Royal Marine Engineers, so he got to build lots of huts for WRENS to work in, for example and I never heard of him progressing beyond the rank of Private. Similarly his elder son, Jim Junior, never sought any job of leadership, and always deferred ppl to me, when he was asked where he had been walking, on which mountain, when we oftimes climbed together on Scotland's Monro hills.
Mmaybe in an analogous way, when the Minister of War wrote to our Mam, after our dad's demise, she didn't take it as read, but she took the Crown to Court with the assistance of the British Legion, a Veterans' Association. From one court after another during the following 2 years, when it came before Lord Justice Jennings, the Appeal Judge who one day would become the Master of the Rolls as Britain's premier Judge.
In one of the earlier courts the Crown Lawyer was reputed to have said to our mother:"You can't prove that your husband did't die from natural causes!" when she rounded on him with the words, "And you can't prove that he did!". When during the appeal they came to consider the evidence from the earlier procedings, Tom Denning said it was not our mother's job to prove anything but that it was incumbent upon the Crown to prove any suppositions, awarding our Mam her pension on a point of law!!
So maybe I got to inherit my fighter genes from my Mam rather than from my Dad which at the same time could well be the reaon and same person I inherited my leadership skills, lol
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