With a turnout of 29 and six speakers we had a real variety of information on various aspects of service and some good exchanges adding information and insight. The last two October meetings had the theme “those who served in the two world wars” as October is the last meeting before Remembrance Sunday. This time we wanted to broaden the topic of service to beyond the just the fighting men from these two wars. It is also a chance for people to do short talks to the full group. In true U3A spirit we ended up with more material than we had time for. Many thanks to Dennis and Bernard for being prepared and volunteering to use their material another time.
We started with story from the Napoleonic era. Janet told the story of Edward Marks in the Royal Horse Artillery Rocket Brigade and medals from both the battle of Waterloo and the battle of Leibzig. The Rocket Brigade were attached to the Swedish army at Leibzig so it is a Swedish Medal, very rare for a British soldier.
Pauline talked about her mother and the role of the NAAFI, something we have all heard of but few realised how big and vital an organisation it was. It would appear there are not a lot of records for this on Ancestry or the NAAFI website. That sounds like a challenge for another meeting!!
Ivan spoke about his father and covered the Fire Fighters of WW2. Again a group we have all heard of but probably did not realize how big the organisation was. The pictures gave an idea just how brave these men were. The women were not allowed on the fire engines or ladders but did carry out the vital task of operate the telephones
Richard, using family stories, newspaper cuttings and the 1915 revision of the Manual of Seamanship gave a view of life spanning the Merchant Navy, Royal Naval Reserve and the Royal Navy. The North Atlantic Convoys of WW1 must have been exceptionally tough and the impact of having been torpedoed TWICE is unimaginable. As with many of the stories shared by this group it is not surprising that that generation did not speak of their experiences. We had an interesting discussion on naval uniforms.
One of our new members, Janet spoke about a Royal Engineers’ dispatch rider and the impact of his experiences on him and the family.
Based on the pictures and discussions on uniforms I could not resist the temptation to show the result a newspaper search on a Destroyer commander during WW1. The search unexpectedly came up with a hit on his wife “Mrs ….. “ with an article about women raising funds and “singing “to the convalescing sailors. Another form of “service”. She turned out to have been an Edwardian Theatre actress and there was a portrait of her in the National Portrait Gallery wearing a magnificent and enormous hat. (She and her husband will be the topic of a talk when I finish researching it, sometime next year)
Next month John Hammond will be speaking on the topic of “The Sea”
The December meeting will be a social meeting with a Quiz, I would like volunteers to come up with a section for this so we have a variety of topics.