Family

This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Sandra Beckett on behalf of Paul Thomas Holmes, the author, and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and condition.
My father, Thomas Holmes, volunteered for the Army at the outbreak of War and joined the Royal Artillery, being trained in Gloustershire. He was posted to Anti-Aircraft duties in defence of Bristol. Dad was born in Sheldon, Co.Durham.
My mother joined the nursing service and went to work at Bristol Hospital (she was of Cornish descent).
In early 1943 there was a heavy raid on the City by German Bombers. My father was a Driver/Gunner at the Battery. Some soldiers were wounded at their post during the air raid, and father drove them to Bristol Hospital for treatment. He met my mother (who was on duty) and they married in the summer of 1943.
I was born on 1st April, 1944, at Pontefract, West Yorkshire (my father’s father having moved from Sheldon to Castleford to work in the Yorkshire coalmines) where my mother lived with her in-laws.
Sadly my father died on 23rd January 1945 (following action in Belgium after the “Battle of the Bulge” and was brought back to a military Hospital at Doncaster where he died. He is one of a few military graves in the Castleford Cemetery. I was just 10 months old when my father died. The remainder of my father’s gun crew were killed in that action and are buried in Belgium.
My mother, now a war widow at the age of 22 years and 7 months, decided to return home to Cornwall and settled in St.Illogan Parish, where I still live. She remarried and died in 1971.
One of my mother’s memories, which annoyed her for her lifetime was the fact that when she went to Bristol to work as a nurse, the authorities insisted that she signed an alien’s register because of her surname — SCHOLLAR — which they insisted was a German surname. In fact it’s Cornish, and was until the late 19th century very common around Sithney and Wendron Parishes. The surname means ‘SHEEP FOLD’ in English and is closely related to the Cornish surname RESCORLA 9meaning SHEEP FOLD FORD).
My mother’s father served in WW1 in the British Army.
My father’s father fought with the Durham Light Infantry in WW1 at YPRES and on the SOMME in 1916. Both survived the first war.
I wrote a poem a few years ago about lose in war and it was published in a local newspaper.

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