Songster’s Bert died 50 years ago this week
FIFTY years ago this week, the Echo reported that grand old soldier and Yeoman, ex-Sergeant Bertie Main, passed away aged 74 years, at his home in Tyler Avenue, Loughborough.
Mr Main served for 22 years in Prince Albert’s Own Leicestershire Yeomanry, joining as a trooper in 1913 and going through the 1914-18 war. He retired in 1935. The Echo report said that: “Many local people would remember that when he went to France with the regiment, he took with him his own horse “Songster” a chestnut stallion.
“They were together at Ypres, Amiens and at other ‘hot’ places until the Yeomanry were so severely cut up, that its surviving members were posted to the Hussars.
Songster then passed to an officer, but subsequently Mr Main was able to buy him back at a sale at Tattersall’s London.
“The horse was eventually retired to a farm on the Charnwood Forest where he died and was buried near a wall.”
Mr Main continued to play a part in the Yeomanry activities, never missing an annual camp.
He was later a foreman coach painter at W S Yeates Ltd, Loughborough and had also recently been employed as a cleaner by Loughborough University of Technology at the Derby Road premises.
He was an exceptionally keen gardener and had two allotments on the Storer’s Charity Estate off Ashby Road, until the land was sold.
He left his wife and two sons Norman and Barry.
A third son, Eric, was killed during World War Two over the Mediterranean, while serving as a sergeant rear-gunner in the RAF.