High Speed Communication

An interesting story and a momentous one!

Very interesting Treeve. that is basically yesterdays email. Nice to see a telegram again... been many years.

My mother left me all her letters and telegrams ... I will eventually be able to put together a story of life during the war for a couple separated by the War; the letters actually gave me a new insight into a man in the RAF, shuffled around the country and across to France as a part of 88 Squadron, I have already managed to make a list of all of his postings, from the envelopes and postmarks. We now look to faxes, emails and mobile phones with texts, but then, the Post Office took the message as handwritten, tapped it into the system, sent down the wires to be received at another teletype machine, the strips pasted to a sheet, placed in an envelope, taken swiftly by a telegram boy by cycle to the door, and then to wait for a possible reply. The messages could be of the utmost distress to the recipient, and it must have caused quite a lot of trauma for the delivery boys in the circumstances. We occasionally see such things in movies, I thought it would be good to have some on Picture Penzance, just to remind us. The most momentous story preceeds the above story ... I am more than lucky to be here.

Fantastic to see, we are so lucky nowadays and take everything for granted and do not appreciated what parents and many others went thro for us!

It was March 1941, my mother was on her way to Belfast; she headed for Fishguard, where her pass was valid; she was with child as they say, ie, me. She was headed to somewhere near Rosslare. The night was so very rough, that the ferry was cancelled and she waited until the next day. She took the next ferry (it was an open pass - I have the pass somewhere), when she arrived at the cottage where she was due to stay, it had been bombed the night before. If the ferry had left, neither my mother nor me would have survived. It would all have been quite a different story for my father, and the fact that my sister and brother would not be around. That is war, That is Fate.

I just hope we never have to go thro what our parents did, in fact thinking about it we never will, one push of a button and we will never know, so it s makes us more humble to know the sacrifices that were made in those days.

Writing up some of the stories of losses of life under attack at sea does reduce me to tears on occasion. The research I made into the WWI action in The Somme, the Hohenzoller Redoubt where my wife s grandfather lost his life, and Ypres where my grandfather fought made me feel quite ill just thinking what those men and women went through, and the families at home not knowing whether or not they would see their loved ones again, and in what condition, physical or mental ... it still goes on.

many a heart was broken when they received one stating The War Office regrets to inform you.......