The Hall family BritBrats

  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 ...

  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.”                 ...

  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 a...

 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 knuckle...

  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...

Introduction My childhood was spent in an army family and, like most other kids I knew, I took the way of life for granted. It was not until I began to grow up that I started to understand that our itinerant way of life was in any way unusual. Now that I'm in my mid-seventies I've reached the point (which will no doubt seem familiar to people of a similar age) when I start to look back on those formative years.  My father too grew up in an army family. It was not until I reached my forties and he was into old age, that I began to take an interest in his experiences, both as an army child and as an army parent. Oh, how I regret not begging him to tell me more, but for reasons I have never fully understood, my mother, discouraged such conversations.  On my parents' deaths I inherited my father's photograph albums and his unfinished memoir and began to delve into the past, looking more generally at family history through Ancestry and getting copies of my grandfather and...