This is the transcript of a letter received by my Great Grandmother in 1913 from her husband Thomas who had gone to Edinburgh from Seaham Harbour where they lived. Trains today do it in 2 Hours and 45 Minutes, his journey took 5 hours and 50 minutes.

Memoirs of Scottish tour - August 13th 1913- (transcript of letter to TH James.)

Left Seaham 5:10, Sunderland 6:20 Beautiful sunshine

Left Newcastle 7:20, station flooded with water must have been raining heavy

8:00 at Morpeth, raining like the devil, heavy fog ??

9:00 Flying like the wind since 8:00, this beautiful woodland scenery, have been about half an hour going through this glorious wood, must be many miles long. Still raining, country turning flat.

9:40 crossed into Bonnie Scotland at Tweedmouth. Splendid sight the scenery from there to Edinburgh simply magnificent. Thoroughly enjoyed ride and have just climbed about 2000 steps out of the station, arrived 11:00. Am sitting now in East Gardens Princes Street which is lovely with designed flower beds, my eyes are so strained with the constant change I cannot see what I am writing. No rain in Scotland but very dull will take it easy today just rest and find lodgings to rest eyes.

This place is beyond exciting, went to Leith and have been sitting the last two hours upon the water. Forth bridge.

My eyes are a little better than before but no good for city life, the glasses put me in the dark so that I cannot see distant things. Except Princes street the other streets are rotten for me all stone paved. Will be back about 5 and will then look for lodge.

Have not yet come across Post Office, expect to find one tonight. I am like a fool in a pig stye, if I speak to anyone they don’t seem to understand me and if they say anything I don’t understand them. But I am enjoying myself, nice day up aloft but ground rotten for me. I am going to engage someone and ride round to see the main sights tomorrow and then quit for Glasgow tomorrow, I cannot see a blooming ?? so stick in and do right until next chapter.

Thursday morning, nice morning, have just got up after a good night sleep only awoke twice from 9:30 to 6:30 Am feeling nice and fit and will take it easy today. Have good lodgings and eyes are feeling much better am also feeling more at home., will stay here until Saturday.

Today I’ve crushed in a years joy, it has been one glorious dream. I have been no less than seven hours in a brake drawn by four horses through the most beautiful places you would imagine. Those who say Princes Street is ALL in Edinburgh have never seen it. I will tell you about it when I come back.

Independent of Princes Street’s beauty, its traffic is the most marvellous thing I’ve ever seen, 20 times more than you ever see on High Street. If you had been with me today you would have been killed with joy. They tell me this traffic has no chance whatever with Glasgow.

I have a notion of going to Glasgow tomorrow then I could get on that wonderful Clyde on Saturday and make sure of seeing Glasgow on a Saturday night.

I’m simply drunk with joy over my last two days but strange to say I’ve never enjoyed a meal in Edinburgh, they cannot cook her for me and I cannot find a pork chop.

Press this piece of bonnie heather from the bonnie hills of Scotland I’ll tell you a tale about it. I hope baby is keeping well

Tom

(The piece of Heather is still in the envelope with the letter)

50 years ago.

50 years ago Winston Churchill died and this was followed by a state funeral.

We were trying to think what we were doing at the time. Glynis recalls working in Willenhall, which involved catching a bus to Wolverhampton town centre from Warstones Estate, then a trolley bus to Willenhall and then a 15 minute walk to the company she was working at. At that time, travelling to and from work on public transport could add two hours to her working day.

As an apprentice with BT, I was helping to dig a trench and lay a cable under a footpath in Wombourne, a job made more difficult by the snow we had to move before starting to dig our cables in. The temperature was about minus 3 degrees C and I was on the verge of hypothermia when a lady came out of her house and asked us (the thee engineers laying the cable) if we wanted a hot drink. The boss said yes, so we abandoned digging and went for our hot drinks. She had made coffee only (no Tea!) so I had to try it for the first time, I’d only ever drank tea before then. I was so cold I was prepared to drink anything that would stave off freezing to death so I tried her coffee and discovered that it was drinkable if you put enough sugar in it (about three teaspoons). I have continued to drink coffee (as well as tea) since that day, but I still can’t drink it without sugar.

Flying flowers (www.flyingflowers.co.uk)

We have used this company on a number of occasions in the past and the recipients have always been pleased with their flowers so I decided to get a bouquet sent to Glynis on her birthday, instead of buying them myself and smuggling them into the house the previous night to present on the birthday morning.

(I’m not sure if this was a good idea as Glynis spent the morning of her birthday wondering why she didn’t have flowers and I had to spend the morning making excuses for not going out until the postman had been.)

So I went to their web site and found a Carnival Bouquet, available in three sizes Standard, Medium and Large. The MEDIUM one looked good in the picture so I ordered that one.

Fortunately the postman arrived mid-morning on Glyn’s birthday with a box containing the flowers. It didn’t look as big a bouquet as I had seen in the picture but Glynis opened it and was very pleased I hadn’t forgotten her flowers.

I took the label off and it clearly stated that it was a STANDARD so I assumed they had sent the wrong one and dashed off an email to complain. The company was very good and said they would send a replacement bouquet as soon as possible.

In the meantime I had a look in the catalogue contained in the parcel with the flowers and to my surprise I found the same flowers, available in three sizes, but the sizes in the catalogue were Posy, Standard and Indulgent. The Catalogue STANDARD appears to be the same as the Website MEDIUM. I also noted that the flowers will be sent while they are still in bud, but the photo is taken when they are in full bloom, which might explain why the ones I received looked smaller than the picture in the catalogue.

So the second lot arrived (Standard size again) but it looks to me as if STANDARD is the middle size, so I probably got the ones I ordered after all.

Anyway I can’t complain any more since we got two lots of flowers for the price of one. The Customer service dept were very efficient and the problem only arose due to their own inconsistent labelling of the product. I shall have to check the web site again soon to see if they have changed the descriptions to match the catalogue and delivery label description.

World War 1 - My two Granddads.

George Henry Tame ---------------

My two Grandfathers almost met in World War 1 in 1918

 

In 1914 the two men who would become my two Grandfathers were totally unaware of the existence of each other and were living 220 miles apart in the UK.  

 

Granddad George Henry Tame, born in 1891, was living in Wolverhampton where he was working in a local brewery.

 

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Granddad John William Proom, born in 1892, was living in a small coastal village in Northumberland called Seaton Sluice, where he was a coalminer, together with his father and two brothers.

John William Proom

 

In 1914 WWI started.

 

Granddad Tame enlisted in Wolverhampton where he joined the 1/5^th South Staffs Regiment.

 

Granddad John William Proom and his two brothers joined the army in Northumberland, Granddad joined the Northumberland Fusiliers and his brother Alfred joined the Durham Light Infantry. His second brother, Robert, joined the Royal Engineers, survived the war and emigrated to South Africa.  Alfred Proom died, aged just 20, on the Somme in Aug 1916.

 

By 1918 both my Granddads had spent some considerable time in the trenches in France and were both now located just a few miles apart in the region near Bullecourt in Northern France.

 

It was known by now that the German General Luderndorff was planning an offensive but no one knew where or when this would take place.

 

On March 21^st 1918 Luderndorff launched his offensive, known as the KaiserSchlact.

 

This was a major German offensive which was the Germans last gamble attempt to win the war by breaking through the British and French lines before USA troops joined the war in France.

 

Several thousand Germans guns blazed away to a predetermined plan that lasted for five hours, firing a mixture of Shrapnell shells, which exploded in mid-air raining down shell fragments and balls of lead, high explosive shells that detonated on impact and three types of gas shells containing either, chlorine, phosgene or a type of tear gas.

 

In just five hours, the Germans fired one million artillery shells at the British lines held by the Fifth Army – over 3000 shells fired every minute.

 

Grandad Tame was with the 1/6^th South Staffords holding a line at Annequinn when the Germans began this tremendous bombardment. Believing this was to be a German assault they manned their defences in readiness for the German attack. The attack never materialised.

 

Further south, in Hirondelle Valley to the west of Bullecourt the 2/6^th South Staffs were also waiting for the German offensive, and when it came the 2^nd South Staffs were overwhelmed, with 6 officers and 106 men being killed and many more being taken prisoner.

 

Further up the line near Bullecourt, the Northumberland Fusiliers, including Granddad Proom were also in a state of readiness. But here the artillery bombardment was followed by an attack by elite German storm troopers. This was a new tactic, these soldiers travelled lightly and did fast, hard-hitting attacks before moving on to their next target. Unlike soldiers burdened with weighty kit etc., the storm troopers carried little except weaponry (such as flame throwers) that could cause much panic, as proved to be the case in this attack. Granddad Proom’s Battalion found themselves being attacked and overwhelmed.

 

An eye witness account says ‘We kept up rapid fire as the Germans advanced, but there were so many of them and we seemed so few. Eventually we could do no more and some of the men put up their hands to surrender. Others decided to fall back to reserve positions, a decision that cost many men their lives as they were under shell and machine gun fire as they retreated.

 

From what I have been told, I believe Granddad Proom started to retreat but fell into a shell crater, and sheltered there from the bullets and shells until the advancing Germans found him and took him prisoner.

 

Granddad Proom was captured on 21st March 1918. He was made a prisoner of war but told the Germans he was a farmer, because he knew if he’d told them he was a miner he would probably been sent to work in a German coalmine.

 

By the end of the first day of the German attack, 21,000 British soldiers had been taken prisoner and the Germans had made great advances through the lines of the Fifth Army. Senior British military commanders had lost control of the situation. They had spent three years used to static warfare and suddenly they had to cope with a German onslaught. The British Fifth Army were ordered to withdraw. The German attack was the biggest breakthrough in three years of warfare on the Western Front. Ironically, the British gave up to the Germans the Somme region – where so many British and German soldiers had been killed in the battle of 1916.

 

The Germans kept up the offensive for 5 days but it proved difficult to hold on to the newly gained territory due to a lack of resources and the KaiserSchlact petered out by the start of April 1918.

 

Not long afterwards, the British and allied forces prepared for another push forward and Granddad Tame’s South Staffs Regiment were involved in the Battle of St Quentin, an attempt to break through the German defences on the Hindenburg line. By now the British were being supported by American troops, but were still outnumbered by the German forces.

During this ferocious battle, Granddad Tame was bringing transport containing rations and small arms ammunition to the front line under heavy shell fire. In recognition of this he was awarded the military medal, for bravery in the field. When he returned to Wolverhampton he was awarded a pocket watch by the Patriotic committee in recognition of his honour.

 

Granddad Tame lived the rest of his life in Wolverhampton, where he brought up 4 sons including my Dad, and he worked for 50 years at Butler’s Brewery. He died in 1963.

 

Granddad Proom returned to Seaton Sluice after the war where he lived until his death in 1979. After the war he always celebrated 21st March as a second birthday, as he was of the opinion that being captured on that day probably saved his life.

 

 

Bob Tame, family history researcher.

 

Web site: - www.tameclan.me.uk

Room 101

In the novel 'Nineteen Eighty Four' by George Orwell, Room 101 is a torture chamber in the Ministry of Love in which the Party attempts to subject a prisoner to his or her own worst nightmare, fear or phobia.

Room 101 will therefore contain the things you hate the most.

I have decided that in my Room 101 you would find:-

- Gloucestershire. – Gloucestershire serves no purpose other than to make my journeys to the midlands longer. The M5 through Gloucestershire is boring and featureless.

- Washing Machines. – Extremely heavy devices which are a nightmare to move, due to the large lumps of concrete that are inside to weigh them down together with the extra complication of plumbing, with its potential for leaking and dumping water in places it does not belong. Broken Washing machines are a particular nightmare.

- People who hog middle lane on motorway, when the inside lane is empty. I met quite a few of these again today. I understand that the police may now issue tickets to these people, but police cars are never there when they are needed.

What would be in your room 101?

Parking (again)

Had to take Glyn to Torquay Hospital today for an appointment.

I drove around the car park twice but was unable to find a space, so Glyn got out and went for her appointment. I continued to drive around the three car parks near where I needed to be but was unable to find a space. I tried on the road outside, but there are only about three spaces that are not for residents only and they were all full.

I eventually found a space at the top end of the hospital, by a sign that warned me I'd be fined £70 if I did not buy a ticket, unfortunately there was no sign of a ticket machine.

Just then Glyn phoned to say she had seen the person she needed to see and was ready to be picked up. Just as well she hadn't gone on her own or she would have missed her appointment time altogether.

The frustration is, there is lots of green space in the grounds that could be converted to car parking as it has always been an issue here, but I don't suppose it ever will be converted, it just sits there and grows!

On a brighter note, we went to Teignmouth on Sunday to meet Glyn's Brother and the car park there was free on Sundays. Well done Teignmouth Council, we'll come there again.

An expensive pint

A gorilla went into a quiet country pub, put a ten pound note on the bar and asked for a pint of beer. The barman served him and thinking 'he's probably not very bright' gave the gorilla £5 change. Then, wishing to appear friendly, the barman said "We don't get many gorillas in here".

" I'm not surprised" answered the gorilla, " if you charge them all £5 for a pint of beer"