239815 Sgt. George Bamber British Army 61st (South Midland) Division Royal Engineers from:Bristol My grandfather George Bamber fought with the Royal Engineers and was captured by the Germans in France and gassed. He was temporarily blinded and left permanently with weak lungs. He joined up in 1914 when he was a mature 34. I never had the privilege of knowing him since he died of a stroke when my mother was in the early stages of pregnancy with me.
He left school at 14 and became an apprentice engineer, finally ending up as a factory inspector. George was a talented cornet player and played solo in front of Queen Victoria. A mark of his talent is that he must have only been 20 when he performed before her since she died in 1901. He lost three sons in infancy. The next arrival was Hilda in 1910, Leonard in 1912 and finally my father Ronald in 1916. These tragedies left their mark and he took to drink. He was always sloping off to the off-licence to buy bottles of Guinness before band practice or rehearsing in his bedroom. But he cured himself of alcoholism; and when he died, my grandmother found a crisp 50 pound note in his pocket. He was a good-natured man and despite his travails had a well-developed sense of humour.
At one stage Grandma got a telegram from the War Office that ran something along the following lines: "This is to inform you that your son/father/husband/brother George Bamber has been killed in action/captured/wounded (strike out as applicable)."
But nothing had been struck out. She immediately hotfooted it to the police station where the duty sergeant licked his pencil and said something like "Right missis, nothing we can do about it at this hour. Have to wait till morning when they're open." So poor Grandma was left having kittens.
Shortly afterwards as my grandmother was walking through Bristol with the pram carrying two-year-old Leonard and holding four-year-old Hilda's hand she was approached by a gypsy woman bearing a sprig of heather. She merely said "He's all right and is coming home soon." And he indeed did.
When he was captured by the Germans they were being marched through a remote village, and a local woman took pity on them and tried to give them food. If they were caught doing this, then the food was confiscated and the woman beaten. One of them succeeded in giving Grandpa a baked potato which he surreptitiously put down his trousers, giving himself a serious burn.
He was the oldest of eight children of George Bamber and the indomitable Mary Anne Freeth, who ruled the family with a rod of iron. What she said went. Grandpa George had to lock his trunk so that Mary Anne couldn't pawn his clothes.
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