We met at Joan Read's on a nice day for January not cold nor wet. All the stories were very good, four gained equal votes so we took one from the hat which was Sue's to represent all of them.
SPREAD INFORMATION
Spreading information isn’t something we think very much about in the 21st Century. We take for granted that we have radio, television, phones, especially mobiles, and e-mail as well as newspapers. I did reflect on the phenomenal speed at which we receive breaking news when a plane performed an emergency landing in the Hudson River and the scene was snapped by a mobile phone user as the passengers emerged onto the wings. This amazing scene was flashed around the world even before the media knew about it!
Things were very different in past centuries, going back to when word had to be carried by messengers on foot or galloping from village to village on horseback, by town criers and more recently, during the previous two centuries, by telegram. Do you remember the telegram boys on their Post Office bikes, sporting their fetching uniforms and hats?
In times of war, those telegrams were viewed with dreadful fascination by wives and families waiting for news of loved ones. I know personally of one brave woman who had experienced these seesawing emotions, as what happened to her and her two year old son was a particularly cruel series of events.
Her husband, Ernie, was serving in the Royal Navy at the outbreak of war on 2nd September 1939. He was in the Mediterranean, expecting to return to port and a reunion with his wife and family, but his ship, HMS Glowworm, was diverted to the North Sea and on 8th April 1940 was sunk by the heavy cruiser Hipper during what some described as a foolhardy engagement and others hailed as an act of heroism. Many lives were lost, some in dreadful circumstances as oil insidiously crept around the sinking ship, coating and choking the hapless sailors who had managed to escape. The German propaganda machine later made full use of on- the-spot photographs of their rescue of some of the crew.
Meanwhile, Ellen had received the dreaded telegram from the Admiralty on 11th April, regretting having to report that her husband was missing, believed killed, on war service. Ellen began the heartbreaking task of going across the road every evening to listen to the nightly broadcasts from Bremen on her friend’s radio, naming British Naval prisoners, and she hoped to hear Ernie’s name and discover his fate. And fate certainly took a hand here, as one evening she was too ill to visit her friend. However, Mrs Lucas still listened and heard the announcer give a name that sounded like "Hurker". This was such scant information to go on that she said nothing, not wishing to raise Ellen’s hopes. Imagine everyone’s joy when Ellen received a telegram on the 25th April, to say, "Pleased to inform you information received from enemy sources that your husband Ernest …, Leading Signalman P/JX 132913, has been saved and is a prisoner of war and is injured."
Fourteen days of misery were at an end and there was much rejoicing among family and friends. Ellen told the Echo she had last seen her husband six weeks before when he came home on leave. On the day the first telegram came she had also received a very poignant letter from Ernie, saying it would be a long time before he would be home again. She had already bought mourning clothes when she heard of her tragic loss, but could now put them away again.
But cruel fate had not finished with Ellen, for some time later she received yet another telegram from the Admiralty, stating, "Deeply regret to inform you that information been received from Geneva that your husband Ernest … died on 22nd April 1940 in Trondheim Hospital and was buried in Stawne Cemetery, Trondheim on 30th April 1940." So all the time she had been celebrating the great news that Ernie had survived the sinking of the Glowworm, he was in fact already dead; such a tragedy for her and her son, Brian.
I am only a bystander in this family tragedy, but Brian grew up to become my husband and I still often think of their great loss, one of my ambitions being to visit that cemetery and pay my respects to the father-in-law I never knew.
Yes, times have changed so much and graphic pictures of the world’s tragedies often reach us via television within minutes of them happening. We certainly know how to spread information today.
