My uncle gave his life so his brother could stay with kids
11/11/1918-11/11/2018: 100 years since end of World War 1 Readers share their memories of loved ones who fought… and died
AS we approach the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, we are telling the stories of the ordinary people who made an extraordinary sacrifice. Today, the Daily Mirror’s Sports News Editor Mike Allen remembers a man who gave his life for his brother.
MY great-great uncle Allan Tatham died a hero, but he was touched by another, very public, tragedy five years before he fell in battle.
In 1912, Allan was a pall bearer at the funeral of his close friend and cousin Wallace Hartley, the legendary band leader on the Titanic, in their home town of Colne, Lancs. While Wallace played Nearer, My God, to Thee as the ship went down, Allan’s sacrifice was even more selfless. When Allan’s brother, Edgar, was conscripted in 1917, Allan volunteered to take his place. Allan was single, while Edgar was married with two children, one of them my grandmother, Murial, who could not imagine anyone less suited to war than her gentle uncle. But he joined the East Lancashire Regiment, and Private Tatham was shipped off to Belgium.
On October 8, 1917, his unit was told to move two miles from Ypres, West Flanders, to the front for the Battle of Poelcappelle, in conditions so bad the night march took them 11 hours.
The book History of the East Lancashire Regiment in the Great War hails their march and subsequent fighting as “one of the most heroic
episodes” of the war. “Nothing better than this has been done, and Lancashire should thrill to the tale of it because her sons were heroes.”
Allan was 35 when he was killed on October 10, 1917. He is buried at Poelcappelle cemetery.
His sacrifice meant that my gran, her brother, Norman, and their parents, Edgar and Maude, could enjoy a happy family life. But they never forgot the selfless bravery that made it possible.