Family History

It's funny how circumstances prompt memories to surface. In this case, it's been my weekend in Wroclaw and an introduction to one of Dorota's favourite bands, the trip-hop Sneaker Pimps.

Wroclaw, much rebuilt, bears so many scars from its past. It was once a German city, extensively damaged during the war and filled with grey concrete in the communist area. That made me think of history. And the Sneaker Pimps were from Hartlepool.

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In December1914 my grandfather was in the army and stationed in Hartlepool, with a sentry's job of guarding the docks, which were the closest port to the vast Durham coalfields which fuelled half of the British Navy. He was also courting my grandmother at the time so for the 16th December he asked to exchange shifts with another soldier.

There's a plaque to his comrade there, now.

The man with whom my grandfather swapped shifts was killed by a shell from a German ship offshore; the first man killed on British soil during the First World War. It should have been my grandfather. Life and death are a matter of chance, so often.


:o/