Pandemic

In light of current world events, I thought it would be an excellent time to look at the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, known as  'Spanish Flu', that most likely carried off a relation or two of mine, given that a quarter of the British population was affected and 228,000 people died of it in the U.K. alone.  According to the HISTORIC UK web page (link below), it is believed that soldiers returning from the trenches of France were the primary vector for the spread of the deadly virus around Britain.   The pandemic deaths in England and Wales peaked in November, 1918, and I've noted in the past that the family members listed as having died around this time were not very old, so had speculated on this being the culprit.  What was different about this particular H1N1 virus was that it killed off healthy people, rather than just children, the elderly, or the immunocompromised.  

I'm going to go through my family research and find those people who are candidates for being victims of the Spanish Flu.  It costs a silly amount of money to get death certificates from the General Register Office in the U.K., so I am not going to do that in the foreseeable future.  One day soon, hopefully, that stuff will be more readily available online for free.

• Daisy Agnes Meadows, Lily Maud's younger sister, died at the age of 25 in the October-November-December quarter of 1918.  
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And in Wales...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-45577611

In Wales, I cannot find many dates of death for the family, primarily due to the rate of commonality of names (Jones, Evans, Thomas), making it uncertain from researching online as to who is who.  But I found the map above on the BBC website, and you can see that the Ogmore Valley was one of the two areas hardest hit by the 1918-19 influenza pandemic.  Most of my nearest Welsh family lived in this area at the time of the pandemic.


More on the story from these sites:

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Spanish-Flu-pandemic-of-1918/
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-45798623
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html

239 Cavendish St.

Someone with an interest in the historic wall lettering on Ipswich buildings has got a website dedicated to photographing this old lettering around the town.  Apparently (who knew?!), Ipswich is "the earliest continuous settlement in England, dating back to around AD 600, with Ipswich Ware [pottery] being produced from around AD 670".  It just so happens that 239 Cavendish St., the home of some of our late 19th and early 20th century Meadows relatives made it to this site as it has an Ipswich Ware wall plate on the facade.

This is the website link:  http://www.ipswich-lettering.co.uk/

Having looked it up now, the "earliest continuous settlement in England" seems to mean not including the Romans, Vikings, Celts, etc. - in other words, continuously settled by the 'English' Anglo-Saxons.  There are older settlements than Ipswich around the country, as we all know. 

239 Cavendish St. on the right

Pottery Wall Tile at 239 Cavendish.

  Photo credits to Borin VanLoon: http://www.ipswich-lettering.co.uk/cavendishstreet.html

Prisoner of War No. 263882: RAC L/CPL Donald F. Greed

Digging into the family history treasures again last week, my attention was caught by the Nazi insignia on something among some items a previous generation of family researchers had put into plastic archival sleeves.  I'd always known about my Grandmother's brother, Donald Greed, being interned in a German P.O.W. camp, and here were some  documents and a couple of letters from him that had been saved.  

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eingang_StaLag_IVB.JPG

According to the German document, 23-year old Donald Greed was captured in Libya on 21st of June, 1942 and eventually ended up to the Kreigsgefangenen Manschaftsstammlager (Prisoner of War Main Camp), IV-B.   When I started to look up information on the camp, the first bit of trivia I learned is that the familiar term 'Stalag' is actually an abbreviation of Stammlager, which itself is an abbreviation of the longer name above.  

The capture date of 21st of June, 1942, marked the Fall of Tobruk, when the Allied Forces surrendered to Rommel, leaving about 33,000 prisoners in the hands of the Germans and Italians.   From what I've been reading, the prisoners from Tobruk were all handed over to the Italians to bring back across the Mediterranean to Europe by boat (at least one of which was torpedoed by the British, tragically, sinking it with their own men on board), with many of them remaining in Italian POW camps, while others were sent further north into Germany.  

Donald Greed was one of those prisoners who was interred in an Italian POW camp to start with, then the story goes that he escaped, only to be recaptured two weeks later and sent to Germany, to Stalag IV-B.  He was damned lucky he wasn't shot.  So far, I cannot find out where he was in Italy, but there will be more information on him in the archives.  

Stalag IV-B, was located about 45 km north of Dresden, and was one of the largest German POW camps in WWII.   Interestingly to me, this was the camp Kurt Vonnegut was brought to when he was captured as well, but he was famously detailed to a work team in Dresden, where he survived the Allied bombing of the city by sheltering in a slaughterhouse.  He wrote his brilliant anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, about his experience.

Back to Uncle Don...

Here are the documents I have.  This first one has no writing on it at all.  The reverse side is blank.  Was it sent home as some kind of proof of him being held captive?  It's in immaculate condition, so I don't think it was anything he would have had on him when the camp was liberated by the Russians.  His others papers are dog-eared and worn.  The answer will be out there somewhere.

This is his 'Personelkarte' with all his details.

Messages Home Via the Vatican

Here are some other interesting images.  The first one is a slip of paper that must have been tucked into the envelopes of letters from all the British POWs in Italian camps, having gone through London via the Vatican delegations in Rome and Lisbon.

The ink has faded quite a bit, but I was able to correct it enough to make it legible.  All images can be clicked on to enlarge them here too.

Below are images of both sides of a post card to my Grandmother from her brother, Donald Greed.   Now, I can see what camp he was in: PG-54.  There it was in writing all along, waiting for me to discover.

This camp, PG 54 ( Fara Sabina), was located in what is now the village of Borgo Santa Maria.  Not only was I able to find it at last, but there are multiple websites providing the history of the camp, so we can even speculate with a degree of certainty about Uncle Don's foiled escape now, and how he ended up in Stalag IV-B.

I've embedded the map from the website linked below, which can be zoomed in and out to see more, or to see where in Italy it was.

According to this website (click on this link to open it in another page), Campo PG 54 Fara Sabina, many Allied prisoners escaped into the Apennines in the ensuing chaos after the Italian Armistice on September 3, 1943.  The Italian Army had not been informed what actions they were to take and guards simply deserted.  Then:   

Shortly after the armistice German troops arrived to take control of the camp and immediately set about trying to recapture the POW’s who had fled from the camp. As the POW’s were rounded up they were brought back to the camp to await transportation to Germany.   

Increasingly the camp was used as a collection and transit camp for Allied POW’s captured by the Germans further south...

From the camp the POW’s were marched to Fara Sabina railway station at Passo Corese where they were loaded onto trains, often 40 or more men to an enclosed cattle truck and transported north to Germany, via the Brenner Pass, and many more months of captivity in German POW camps. 

 [https://sites.google.com/site/camppg54farasabina/history, Retrieved 04/03/2020]

The Germans had issued an order that any Italians caught harboring POWs would be shot and their houses burned down, so the men on the run that had been sheltered by locals who had no sympathy for the fascists, had to leave and hide anywhere they could in the forest and mountains.  The Allies were advancing from the south and some escapees tried to get to them.  No doubt, some turned themselves back in as well.  What happened to Donald Greed specifically in all this is still unknown.

WW 1 Soldier Killed In Action

Photo: https://www.ipswichwarmemorial.co.uk/daniel-ford-meadows/

Getting back to the Meadows family again this weekend, I discovered that my Great-Grandmother, Lily Maud Meadows, had a younger brother who was killed somewhere in the advance on Flanders, on October 2, 1918. Bitterly, this was only 40 days before Armistice Day. Daniel Ford Meadows made it through the whole war, having enlisted at 16, coincidentally, on the 2nd of October 1911.  No one in the last generation still living who knew Lily Maud had ever heard of this brother, so it was sad to learn about him and his fate this week.

British Army WWI Service Records, 1914-1920. Ancestry.com

Thanks to the wonderful work of two Ipswich natives, there is now a photographic tribute to the 500 Ipswich soldiers killed in WWI and WWII, along with a Facebook tribute page.

Here's a link to the article in the Ipswich Star online as well:  https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/sailmakers-shopping-centre-first-and-second-world-war-tribute-1-5709277

Knightsbridge Wedding

A new year and a promise to get researching and blogging again.  Starting with the simple fact that until recently I had never seen my own grandparents' wedding photograph, I will begin this next round of blogging with a posting dedicated to them.

This is Jane and Walter Sawyer's wedding day photo, December 27, 1930, on the steps of Holy Trinity Church in Brompton (located right beside the famous Brompton Oratory).  

I looked up Holy Trinity and discovered that it is now an American-style evangelical Anglican church.  It has a cafe in the crypt that serves up, among other delectables, "Smashed Avocado with Feta Crumble, Chili Flakes, Pine Nuts & Balsamic Glaze on Woodfire Sourdough"  Yum. But possibly about as far from anything their generation could have imagined eating in a church crypt as you could get.  Eating in a church crypt, in fact, would not have been imaginable.  Different times.  I love to see the juxtapositions.

Here is a copy of their wedding certificate signed on that day.  Click on it to see a bigger image.