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Pte. Bertram Francis Nason
British Army 10th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment
from:9 Newbold Place, Leamington Spa
Bertram Nason served with the 10th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was the son of Francis Nason and Esther (nee Adams) of Pillerton Priors and Pillerton Hersey. At the time of Bertram's birth, his father was working on the Chastleton Estate, where he became farm bailiff. Bertram was born at Brookend Farm, Chastleton. In 1901, when he was 16, Bertram was living with his parents at 15 Ryland Street, Stratford and he was a telegraph messenger. His older sister had died aged 11 and is buried in the churchyard at Chastleton. He had an older brother who had moved away and married in Baldock that same year. By 1906, Bertram was a fully fledged postman, as shown in the appointments books, and a year later, he had transferred to Leamington. His patch in the Stratford area was very rural and he would cycle miles, including delivering to the Alscot Estate. He remembers being invited to the staff Christmas parties there. Soon after becoming a postman, he met and fell in love with the head waitress, Lizzie Melville, at the Shakespeare Hotel in Stratford. They were married in Stratford Parish Church on 11 November 1911. The hotel presented them with a silver tea service. The couple lived at 9 Newbold Place, Leamington Spa.
Bertram remained a postman until he enlisted with the 10th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment on 8th of December 1915. He served at Passchendaele. By acquiring the war diaries for the battalion and visiting the museum at Passchendaele, we have discovered that he was gassed at Hill 60. This was an important strategic point for undermining. We have a telegram sent to his wife to inform her that on a certain date in 1917, he was injured and sent to the military hospital at Etaples, on the coast of France. This would have been a hospital largely under canvas. From there he was sent to the Beaulieu Auxiliary Hospital in Harrogate, where he remained, convalescing, for some months. During his convalescence, his wife Lizzie upped sticks and moved to Yorkshire with the dog to be near him. We have a photo of Bertram at Harrogate, the middle man in the front row with the dog on his knee. The suits would have been a statutory blue. In January 1919 he was discharged on the ground of sickness.
Bertram and Lizzie continued to live in Leamington and had one daughter. After he was widowed in 1953, he lived alone in Leamington. When he was older, he moved to live with his daughter and her husband and their two children in Radway. He died in 1967, having lived to the age of 82 despite the damage he suffered at Passchendaele. His two grandchildren and their partners still live locally.
