Looking for William on "active service" in France in October 1916

This is the second of the Great War picture postcards from the collection of David Harrop.

Over the last few years I have been looking at the stories of those who lived through the Great War both the men who marched away and those who stayed on the Home Front.*

David has a vast collection of postcards, letters, and other memorabilia and has kindly shared some of them with me.**

And in return I will be featuring ten from that collection covering letters and cards from men at the Front, to the medals and official communications down to the souvenirs which sat on a mantelpiece of sideboard.

It will be impossible to draw a strict line between Manchester, and Salford, Stockport and the nearby towns of Ashton and Oldham and Rochdale, if only because some of those in the collection came from one lived in another and worked across another municipal border.

Some have come from even further afield like this one from Thomas to A H Hosking.

Thomas was on “active service” in France and the post card is dated October 1916 which would place Thomas on the Western Front during the last month of the Battle of the Somme.

This had begun in the July of 1916 and dragged on till November by which time both sides had sustained heavy casualties.

Now so far I have not been able to discover anymore about Thomas or Mr A H Hosking who received the card.  The address is still there and it is one of what were once very impressive solid houses on St James’s Road in Croydon

The message gives little away focusing on the positive and comments on the letter and newspaper sent out to France and promises a letter later in return.

With a bit of research I should be able to identify Army Post Office S 18 which may help.

All of which at present just leaves us with the image on the front of the card which came from a series produced by the Daily Mail Official War Pictures.  This was number 11 from series two and carries the title,
“Before battle, in battle, and after battle our "Tommies" are ready for a "fag." These men are lighting up after a scrap.”

And with a little careful research and help from Epsom and Ewell History Explorer I discovered that “during the Great War the Daily Mail produced a number of sets of postcards each showing an Official War Photograph. We believe there were 22 sets each with 8 images. 

The total number of postcards is therefore 176 but some images were used twice, once in colour and once in monochrome. 

All the images had been cleared by the censor and the cards were part of the official British propaganda effort so it is possible that some of the photographs had been posed.”*** 

I will go back into the records and try and find both Thomas and A H Hosking.

If as I expect Thomas’s surname was Hosking then there are a few clues both in the military records and official documents either side of the Great War.

It would be nice to follow up the two individuals and put lives behind the post card.

And that is what David has been able to do with many of his collections.

Only yesterday as I looked through the material he has lent me I came across stories of young fighting men and their families from enlistment to the conclusion of hostilities.

Some of these will be available to see at two exhibitions David will be mounting later in the year.****

Picture; from the collection of David Harrop

 *The Great War, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Great%20War

**David Harrop, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/David%20Harrop

***World War 1 Postcards, Epsom and Ewell History Explorer, 
http://www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk/WW1Postcards.html

****The Atkinson, Lord Street, Southport from July 28 and Oldham Archives, Union Street, Oldham, from August 4