Also his demob papers, other essential documents, 5 gold sovereigns (one each for my dad, his sister, me, my brother and my mother), three pocket watches, his medals, whole sets of Woodbine cigarette cards and lots of other things including a small piece of solid gold that an uncle had sent back from the Klondike.
That turned out to be his WW1 footlocker and contained all of the important things in his life, his letters from my Gran and from lots of ladies who wrote to him during the war, well before Flora came on the scene I must add. A man of not many words who would come and stay with us three or four times a year always carrying this Adidas holdall containing a dark wooden box. When he was demobbed from the army, Andra joined the Navy and was set for a life on the ocean wave until he fell on a ship and broke his back., the prognosis of which was not good, he was told he would never walk again, to which according to the accounts of my father he said is that right and through a lot of pain and determination eventually did and when he did, like a lot of men in Lanarkshire he spent the rest of his working life in the now long gone steel works, the main employers in the area.īy the time I became aware of him, he was into his 80s, a large imposing figure of a man always in a shirt and waistcoat with his pocket watch and chain and the shiniest shoes I have ever seen. He did read my history textbook on the subject, that I had left lying about the living room hoping that it would prompt a discussion but he offered up no opinion on it. When I asked him many years later how he had made it through he said gruffly, “just luck son, just luck” and apart from telling me “I never saw any cowards in France, many scared boys but no cowards” that was the only thing he ever said to me about World War One and I didn’t press him on it as I got a feeling that it was something he did not want to discuss. You may have worked out that Auld Andra’ survived the whole hellish waste of human & animal life, French villages and countryside. He saw action at the first Battle of the Somme and various other locations throughout the trenches of France and Belgium including Passchendale. Andrew, or Grandfaither as I called him enlisted when war broke out, joined the Cavalry and went to France with the rest of the Old Contemptibles. It may not be of any interest to anyone but here we go.Īndrew Wingate was born on the 2nd of May 1892, the same day that his son was born some 45 years later and incidentally the date that his first grandson was due to be born a further thirty years into the future but decided to appear a week early just to mix things up a bit. I must add that it is not the only time that I think about these two men, they pop into my thoughts often. When JC texted me to ask if I would do my usual post for Remembrance Day here as my place has been mothballed for some time and the foreseeable, I first responded that I didn’t think there was any point as for the 11 years across the Kitchen Table I only posted the two names above, a pertinent picture and the most depressing song I could find just to dampen anybody’s spirits who hadn’t already learned the lesson of looking at my blog on that date.īut then I thought about it and it occurred to me that it might be good to go into a bit of depth about those two names and why on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month I stop whatever I am doing and spend 10 minutes or so remembering their faces, their voices and the influence that they had in shaping my views and outlook to life.
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