Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Bible kept grandad safe from shrapnel
LIVING VOICES FROM WWI: DAY PEACE RETURNED
As we approach the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, we will be telling the stories of the ordinary people who made an extraordinary sacrifice. Here David Wilcox, of Baguley, Manchester, tells of the miracle which saved his grandfather’s life.
SOME greater power was certainly looking after my grandfather Private Fred Wilcox the day he was hit in the chest by shell fire, only to be saved by the Pocket Bible he carried in his tunic. He lived to tell the tale that day, and the story of his lucky escape has been passed down to me from my father.
Leaving his fiancee Alice at home in Warrington, my grandad was 19 when he joined the 2nd Battalion, The Rifles, in May 1915 and was sent to war in France.
His regiment saw action all along the front, where they were permanently stationed.
I know from my father he was in one of the battles of the Somme and also at Ypres. It was in the German Spring Offensive of March 1918, when they nearly broke Allied lines, that grandad had his close shave with shrapnel.
I still have the Bible which saved his life. The front and back covers are undamaged, but all the middle pages on the side are sliced through.
Injured but alive, my grandad was found by German soldiers and taken to a German military hospital. From there he was taken as a prisoner of war to a camp in western Germany.
All the prisoners had to eat was cabbage soup, but my brave grandad used to crawl under the wire to dig up potatoes to add to their diet.
After the Armistice in 1918, grandad was repatriated by the Red Cross, taken to Dover and then home to his family and fiancee Alice.
But my grandfather wasn’t the only to have a lucky escape, as his brothers Joseph and Cyril served in France and returned home.
My family was blessed to have sent three boys to war and have all of them come home.
WE lost the last living links with the fighting men of the First World War almost a decade ago.
RAF founding member Henry Allingham died on July 18, 2009, aged 113. A week later Harry Patch, last survivor of the trenches, passed away at 111.
Thankfully, the incredible tales of people who lived through the Armistice. Here three – including one born 100 years ago this Sunday – recall the celebrations as peace returned. emily.retter@mirror.co.uk @emily_retter
BOB, 110
BOB Weighton, born on March 29, 1908, is the oldest man in England and recalls celebrating the end of the war in Queen Victoria Square, Hull.
He said: “At the end of the war there was a victory dance and all the people just gathered in Queen Victoria Square.
“There were soldiers still in uniform and ordinary working class people who came out to celebrate the end of the war.
“I remember going with my grandma and the maid, and one or two of my older brothers and sisters. I was 10.
“We stood on the steps of the City Hall and watched the crowds singing and dancing and shouting and having a jolly good time. But I had to cling onto my grandma’s hand in case I was drawn into the turmoil going on.
“By the time I was 10 I had begun to be aware of world events and I was so happy the war had come to an end.
“And I felt happy so many people were rejoicing along with me. I was happy we were intact. So many other families had been destroyed.
“The men had gone, the fathers, the brothers, the sons had gone. But we were intact, we had survived and I think I was thankful.”
Bob was the son of a vet, one of seven children from a middle-class family.
He spent much of his life working abroad as an engineer but met his wife Agnes while teaching in Taiwan.
The couple married in 1937 and he is a father of three, with 10 grandchildren, and 25 great-grandchildren. Now living in Alton, Hampshire, Bob still lives an independent life, and wrote his life story in his hundredth year.
But his most vivid Great War memories are of the Zeppelin raids on the city between 1915 and 1918.
Bob said: “My father was an air raid warden warning everyone to take cover, so he was often out when the Zeppelins were overhead.
“When the sirens went my mother put me and my brothers and sisters under the dining room table. This was presumably for safety in case a bomb fell on us.
“And I remember the atmosphere of fear with my grandma rocking to and fro
and moaning, ‘Oh God, Oh God, Oh God,’ as we heard the bombs going off and it appeared they were coming nearer and we would be hit.”
The worst raids to hit Hull were on June 6 and 7, 1915, when 13 explosives and 50 incendiary bombs destroyed 40 houses and killed 24.
Bob saw the devastation on his way to school the morning after the raids.
But it reveals much about the Victorian values of the time that Bob’s abiding memory is not the damage, but the sight of a strangers’ bedroom.
He says: “A bomb had taken off the front of a house, and we could see the wallpaper on the bedroom wall and a bed hanging over the destroyed floor.
“But I remember what shocked me was the exposure of somebody’s bedroom to the public gaze.
“I thought that was most shocking.”
CONSTANCE PEACE, 99
As the bells rang out and crowds gathered to celebrate peace after four years of war, one family embraced their own personal bundle of joy.
Connie Hailstone was born on Armistice Day – and will turn 100 as the world marks the centenary of the bloodiest battle in modern history.
While we have all been taught never to forget, Connie has lived with the legacy all her life. Her parents named her Constance Peace, in the hope she would always know continual peace.
Although, sadly, she was to endure another world war in her 20s, today Connie says she has enjoyed a happy life, remaining in Whittlesey near Peterborough, Cambs, close to family and friends. Speaking before her birthday celebrations, she says: “They wanted me to be called Joy or Peace, and they chose Peace.
“It meant a lot to my mother to have some happiness that day.
“We lost our Uncle Alf in the war, he was my mother’s brother. He had only been out on the Front three weeks. He was a stretcher bearer and killed in 1914. My grandmother had a picture of him and that day it fell off the side. She said it was a bad sign. He was my mother’s favourite brother, she kept his arm band with his name on it and spoke about him a lot.” Laughing about her birth, she adds: “Everyone was rejoicing the day I was born because the war was over. It was a good day to get it over with!”
The third child of five to parents Jessie and John Bothamley, a cattle breeder, she is the sole survivor of her immediate family. Her own husband Thomas, with whom she farmed celery all her married life, and daughter Barbara, have passed away. Today, she lives in The Hermitage care home in Whittlesey, where she will mark the big day with family and friends – including her great-nephew who will be mark his seventh birthday.
DAISY, 110
Daisy Bastin said her family felt “great relief” when the war ended. “We survived, nobody had died,” she says.
“We thought we had lost our daddy because he was in the Royal Naval Reserve and when his ship was sunk it was reported that everyone was lost.
“But he was one of the few survivors and when he arrived home it was like he’d come back from the dead.
“So when the war ended there were great celebrations in our village in Devon. Everyone was dancing and singing and the bands were playing out on the green. It was wonderful.
“It helped make up for all the suffering. Nobody will ever know what those poor men went through.
“My dad was an invalid for the rest of his life, but he had survived.”
Daisy was married to her husband Alf for 50 years, and had a son together.
Alf was injured in the Second World War and Daisy, of Glastonbury, Somerset, said: “I helped care for him every day when he got back.”