The Hall family BritBrats

Bugles, Bullets and Boxing The ACF became very much part of my life and took pride of place over all other activities. I became a trumpeter and bugler and wore both instruments. Calls were normally by trumpet and that instrument was carried at the side with the bugle worn knapsack fashion on the back. When on the march we played the bugle with the band when the instruments were in carried in the reverse order. I knew all the calls before I ever put an instrument to my lips, so for me it was a case of practising until ones lips became hard and the tongue could flutter or ‘double tongue’ as it was known. AWH, Army Cadet Force Bugler In less than no time I became a bombardier and drill instructor. Our TA quartermaster Sgt was very kind to me and taught me to use a .22. There was always plenty of ammunition and I would spend hours at weekends when the riding school was not in use, at target practice – prone, kneeling and standing positions. It gave me a totally unfair advantage over other

  AWH Joins the Army Cadet Force 1925   Newport had a very fine Army Cadet Force unit which although badged Royal Artillery, was based on the Monmouthshire RE [Royal Engineers] whose drill hall was at Stowe Hill in the centre of the town.  Stow Hill Drill Hall, Newport I was officially too young to join, but I was determined to get into this unit which was the envy of most of the lads.  I hung around the drill hall every drill night for weeks until one evening when the OC, a Capt Templeton, asked me who I was. I explained that my father was the RSM Permanent Staff Instructor at the RA TA Centre at Pill, and pleaded with him to let me join up. To my delight, I was accepted – only, I suspect, because it was felt that my father being a Regular soldier might be of some help to the Cadets! I had to wait some weeks for my uniform and became more and more excited as the great day approached. Finally at last, one drill night, I was sent into the QM store to be kitted out. I was nearly burstin

  Home Life in Newport We had not much of a family life. Father drank a lot and treated my mother badly. It was not until after I had many more years experience in life that I realized that there had been faults on both sides, and the wartime experiences of my father had much to do with his behaviour. As it was, we seldom went out or did anything together as a family. Family holidays were unknown, and a trip up to London with my mother to see her relations in Woolwich was a rare treat. However I made the best of it.  We had three bedrooms in the house, a downstairs ‘front room,’ living room and kitchen-cum- scullery complete with wooden rollered mangle and copper boiler. There was an upstairs bathroom and the lavatory and coal store were in a separate outside shed. My bedroom, which I shared with Tom when he came home on leave, looked out onto the stables.  Sketch showing position of the family's quarter next to the riding school As a rule I woke fairly early in the morning and wou

  Schooling in Newport My sister and I were sent to St. Joseph’s, a Convent School. Mabs was in her element, but I couldn’t stand it. There were too many prayers, too many girls, and Mother Superior had whiskers! I think it cost 2/- a week to attend that school so my father did not object strongly when I asked to leave!  Mabs, seated on the left   This photo may be of Mabs's class at St. Joseph's  There was no alternative other than to go to Bolt Street elementary school with all the ‘raggedy arsed boys,’ as my father called them, but it suited me. It was only a couple of miles to walk, and all my quickly made friends went there.  Newport, like the rest of South Wales at the time was just into the throes of a terrible depression leading up to the 1926 General Strike. There was little work about, and Pill was particularly hard hit.  I was one of the few boys at Bolt Street School who wore proper shoes. The vast majority work ‘daps’ or plimsolls – many were bare-footed. Disciplin

Move to Newport   The next move was to Wales where my grandfather took up his posting on 20th September 1925. My father was then 9 years old.  Around 1925. Tom, Arthur, Nanny Hall, Mabel (Mabs) and Grandad Hall About 1925, brother Tom enlisted as an apprentice artificer RA, and went off to the Military College of Science at Woolwich, and within a short time we moved to Newport in Monmouthshire where my father was appointed RSM of the 83rd (Welsh) Brigade RA (TA.) We occupied one of two married quarters, the adjoining one housing my father’s Battery Sgt Major Jerry Old and his family. These quarters were part of the TA complex in the poorest area of Newport, at the bottom of Lime Street in the district of Pillgwenlly (commonly known as Pill.) The complex consisted of a Drill Hall with gun park for its 13/18 pound field guns and 4/5 Howitzers, administration offices, Officers’ and Sgts’ Mess and a Men's spit and sawdust wet canteen. Adjoining the drill hall was a Riding School. Our q

  Entertainment and Education There were musical rides, gymkhanas and all manner of sporting events with never a dull day. Rivalry between regiments was fierce and many a time my brother Tom and I would sneak into the Garrison gymnasium to hide in the balcony and there watch, enthralled, many a bloody fight in the inter unit boxing contests. Two names spring to mind – L/cple Tim Wigmore as he was then, who be came one of the finest Welterweights the Army has ever had – I was to meet him many years later when he was at the height of his carer as a WO in the Army Physical Training Staff. Then there was Bugle Major Bendrey, whose name was a byword in Army Boxing. What tremendous displays these two used to put on. My father doesn't mention family outings, but evidently there were opportunities for these as this photo of a charabanc outing shows. This boat trip may have been part of the outing pictured above. My grandmother is seated in the middle of the picture, wearing a dark cloche-t

  The family moves to Colchester My father had been a pre-war Territorial Soldier and was embodied into the Regular Army at the outbreak of war in 1914. He loved the life so much that he continued as a Regular at the end of hostilities by which time he must have been a very very young Regimental Sergeant Major.        Soon after my father returned from the Army of Occupation we moved to Colchester in Essex, where the old man was to be Permanent Staff Instructor with an R.A.T.A. unit. For a while we lived in George Street, in the heart of the town. Colchester, one of the oldest military garrisons in England was a delightful place in those days. We three children went to a school at the bottom of a hill below the Castle, but we moved again about a year later to the outskirts of the town and again, within a few months, to married quarters in Berechurch Road. The married quarters were contained in three blocks running parallel to one another. Each block contained a series of four flats, tw

  Home on Leave My father used to live it up when he came on leave from France and within a few days he was broke. So, off he would to Plumstead Baths or the old Ring at Blackfriars, and there manage to get himself on the bill to fight as a welterweight and so earn a few extra pounds. The prize money was small but father used to tell me that he often got more from ‘nobbins’ – money thrown into the ring by the patrons near the ringside in their appreciation of a good set-to, at the end of the fight. My mother hated it and used to be worried stiff!                Postcard sent to my father, serving in France Mother, seated, with my older brother Tom and sister Mabs.    I would have been 11 months old when this was taken. “May 5 th  1917 – Daddy Darling, we all want to know when you are coming home to have your photo taken with us.”                             Mrs Hall, 38 Winifred Street, Nth Woolwich’   A year later the war had ended, and the family was re-united in 1919

  Dad writes about his father, Capt. T. W Hall MM and Croix de Guerre By the time the 14-18 War ended, my father was a Battery Sgt Major R.F.A. with a distinguished war record. He had been decorated with the Military Medal and the French Croix de Guerre with Palm and had been mentioned in despatches several times. I have an original letter written to him on the squared paper of a Field Service Pocket Book after one of his actions. He had rescued one of the batteries and some Allied soldiers who had been trapped under intensive fire from the Germans. It says,  ‘Dear Sgt Hall, On behalf of the officers and men of the late 6 th  County of London Battery, I beg you to accept this small token of gratitude and admiration in the way you came to our help on that fateful night of Oct 1 st  1916. The whole battery was desirous of showing its appreciation of your gallant work and of the way you came to the succour of our stricken comrades and also wished to give you something as a reminder in yea

 George and Granny Hennessy Old George Hennessy was a tough nut who fascinated me. He was a fighter if ever there was, and was forever getting into trouble through his fighting Irish temper. He must have been a clever scrapper for he went fifteen rounds to draw with the great Pedlar Palmer one-time flyweight champion of the world, when in his heyday. He must also have been a pretty rough fighter too, to which his scarred face and broken nose bore witness. He would describe his fights to me in a way that gripped my attention and invariably they concluded with the old man saying, as he lowered his fists slightly, ‘Then I drawed the box on him, and bang-bang, down he went!’ The old boy was a past master at the art of feinting which he would sometimes demonstrate, telling me to hold my hands up, left foot forward, slightly crouched, now, with a complete movement of his body, hands and eyes, I would instinctively drop my guard, and then wham, over would come a knobbly old set of knuckles to

  Introducing my father and some of the family Counting from the time when, aged barely 10, he joined the Army Cadets until he finally retired in 1973 my father served for some 47 years. Most of this time he was in REME, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and being awarded an OBE shortly before his retirement. His memoir was still in it's draft stage and well-short of completion at the time of his death in 1997. I'm going to post it in sections, adding photos as I go, but this section of my blog is almost entirely in his own words. My father's story starts I was destined to be a soldier from the day I was born in North Woolwich on 14 June 1916. My father was a Gunner – a sergeant at the time, on active service in France. Mother worked during the war years at the Royal Ordnance Factory, Woolwich Arsenal, sewing ammunition bags, to augment the small army allotment made to her by my father. I had an older brother Tom, five years my senior, and sister Mabel, born three ye