Now some stories have a habit of coming back and becoming even more fascinating.*
Back in early July I came across a postcard from the collection of David Harrop** which had been sent from Egypt in 1916 to a farm in Yorkshire
It was sent to a young Ethel and and I wondered what she made of this postcard from Egypt.
I don’t know if the chap who sent it was her brother or sweetheart but either way his main concern was what was going on at the farm and sadly there is no comment on what he thought of Egypt.
The message was written in pencil and has faded with the passing over nearly a century so it is difficult to work out what he is worried about and all but impossible to make out his name.
My friend Jean read the story and began her own search for the truth and a little later that month she came up with what by any standards is a remarkable story and a good piece of research.
“This postcard sent home by a British soldier serving in Egypt in Feb 1916, and featuring an Egyptian woman and her baby in Cairo, links a Yorkshire farm with the great events of that time and the heroic exploits of Lawrence of Arabia.
The card – written to a girl named Ethel of Low Farm in the village of Barmston- was probably sent to her by Pte. Robert Percy Franks (known as Percy) of the 10th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment.
Following the example of his 19 year old brother James, who had enlisted in August 1914, Percy had enlisted at Hull a month later, aged just 16. She was probably the 16 year old Ethel Mary Wilson, whose father and brothers farmed in the village.
The main Wilson farm of some 290 acres, near the Black Bull in Sands Lane, was a prosperous one, and when Ethel and her older siblings were young the family employed a governess, a nurse, two house servants, a farm foreman, a waggoner, a horseman, two shepherds and two cattlemen.
However, in 1911, when Ethel was 10, she was living with her brother Harry aged 16 and an older sister on another farm in Sands Lane, where young Harry employed a farm foreman, a waggoner, two horsemen and a house servant. Presumably, this was Low Farm.
Percy Franks, then aged 13, was a horseman and one of five men employed by Ethel's father, James Henry Wilson. Despite the difference in their social status, Percy and Ethel would no doubt have been friends, if nothing more.
Percy had arrived in Egypt in December 1915 and his battalion was one of 16 hostilities-only battalions which fought on the Western Front: in Macedonia (1915-18), at Gallipoli (1915) and in Egypt (1915-16).
After the evacuation from Gallipoli, 250,000 British troops were maintained in Egypt to deal with a Turkish threat to the Suez Canal from Palestine across the Sinai Desert.
This threat lessened after T E Lawrence's personal enterprise led to a revolt infecting the whole Arabian hinterland of Palestine and Syria and threatened to cut the Turks' vital Hejaz Railway.
British troops began a massive advance in December 1916, and in July 1917 Lawrence captured Aqaba, his handful of Arabs getting the better of 1,200 Turks there.
By now, with the British success in the Middle East, Percy's battalion had been sent to fight in the Western European Theatre of War in France and Flanders.
His brother James, a waggoner in the Army Service Corps, was already there, but he was to be killed in action in March 1918 .
He had enlisted on the 20th August 1914...one of the first to do so
Percy, too, was never to return home, dying of his wounds on 29 July 1918, aged 20, just a few weeks before the end of the war.
He was buried in the Longuenesse Souvenir Cemetery at St Omer, Calais."
Ethel never married, and she died in February 1986, aged 85."
© Jean Gammons
Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop
*Far from Love Farm, somewhere in Egypt in the February of 1916 with a correction to Low farm, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/far-from-love-farm-somewhere-in-egypt.html
**David Harrop, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/David%20Harrop
It was sent to a young Ethel and and I wondered what she made of this postcard from Egypt.
I don’t know if the chap who sent it was her brother or sweetheart but either way his main concern was what was going on at the farm and sadly there is no comment on what he thought of Egypt.
The message was written in pencil and has faded with the passing over nearly a century so it is difficult to work out what he is worried about and all but impossible to make out his name.
My friend Jean read the story and began her own search for the truth and a little later that month she came up with what by any standards is a remarkable story and a good piece of research.
The card – written to a girl named Ethel of Low Farm in the village of Barmston- was probably sent to her by Pte. Robert Percy Franks (known as Percy) of the 10th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment.
Following the example of his 19 year old brother James, who had enlisted in August 1914, Percy had enlisted at Hull a month later, aged just 16. She was probably the 16 year old Ethel Mary Wilson, whose father and brothers farmed in the village.
The main Wilson farm of some 290 acres, near the Black Bull in Sands Lane, was a prosperous one, and when Ethel and her older siblings were young the family employed a governess, a nurse, two house servants, a farm foreman, a waggoner, a horseman, two shepherds and two cattlemen.
Percy Franks, then aged 13, was a horseman and one of five men employed by Ethel's father, James Henry Wilson. Despite the difference in their social status, Percy and Ethel would no doubt have been friends, if nothing more.
Percy had arrived in Egypt in December 1915 and his battalion was one of 16 hostilities-only battalions which fought on the Western Front: in Macedonia (1915-18), at Gallipoli (1915) and in Egypt (1915-16).
This threat lessened after T E Lawrence's personal enterprise led to a revolt infecting the whole Arabian hinterland of Palestine and Syria and threatened to cut the Turks' vital Hejaz Railway.
British troops began a massive advance in December 1916, and in July 1917 Lawrence captured Aqaba, his handful of Arabs getting the better of 1,200 Turks there.
By now, with the British success in the Middle East, Percy's battalion had been sent to fight in the Western European Theatre of War in France and Flanders.
He had enlisted on the 20th August 1914...one of the first to do so
Percy, too, was never to return home, dying of his wounds on 29 July 1918, aged 20, just a few weeks before the end of the war.
He was buried in the Longuenesse Souvenir Cemetery at St Omer, Calais."
Ethel never married, and she died in February 1986, aged 85."
© Jean Gammons
Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop
*Far from Love Farm, somewhere in Egypt in the February of 1916 with a correction to Low farm, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/far-from-love-farm-somewhere-in-egypt.html
**David Harrop, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/David%20Harrop
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