Reimagine.co.uk – The place where I share my thoughts…
A research account of Edward Charles “Charlie” Rendell’s First World War service with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. It traces his likely enlistment as a teenager, service on the Western Front, capture during the German offensive of March 1918, and imprisonment within the Stendal camp system, while carefully separating established records from informed inference and unresolved questions.
A researched account of my father, Charles James “Jim” Partridge’s Second World War service in the Royal Naval Patrol Service. It follows his survival of the sinking of HMS Mollusc, boom-patrol duty at Scapa Flow, and more than two years aboard the minesweeper HMS Unst in the Mediterranean, while distinguishing firm evidence from family memory and questions still to be resolved.
Came across this today. The program from the first football match I remember going to with my dad, 27th April 1963. I would have been eight then. I have a vivid memory of one of the older Spurs fans telling me where the “Hotspur” name came from. So, got to see Jimmy Greaves and Danny Blanchflower. Sadly for them, shortly afterwards my allegiance switched to Ipswich Town (and stayed there) who were playing Burnley that day. It also mentions the “bad weather.” That classic piece of British understatement was a reference to the “Big Freeze” of 1963 which started after Boxing day ’62 and lasted continuously for ten weeks until a thaw arrived in early March. I’m told it was the coldest January in England since 1814. Another memory from then was building a snowball in the road outside our house that was almost as big as I was. Memorable because back then we rarely got snow being low-lying and close to the sea.
Another experiment with AI. First the original B&W photo scanned at 600dpi. Then the colourised version. I found a contemporary tinted image and instructed the AI to match the colours of the uniforms closely. My grandfather George is at the back on the left (as you are facing). Context: This is a First World War hospital back home. I knew he had been wounded but not the circumstances. He later returned to active service and was captured by the Germans at Messines on the 10th April 1918 during their Michael offensive, which initially caught the allies by surprise. I shall be digging into that to see what more I can discover. I remember him as a gentle man, who never said a harsh word about anyone.
