Every picture tells a tale...

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My maternal grandparents are now sadly dead and the memories I have of them — four year old me sitting with Grandad George in front of the horse racing, with him teaching me to make roll-ups (it was the 1980’s ok?) and my Nana Elsie making me tea with four sugars in (again, the 1980's were a funny time) - are cosy, homely and safe.

When I was asked to find out about their roles in WW2, I didn't expect them to have an exciting story.

Through the years, I've been told bits about their WW2 experiences and the facts have been muddled up in my head, so I spoke to their daughter and my Mum, Lynn, to clarify what actually happened.

Their story is one that would make a fantastic subplot in an epic war film.

It is a love story, one that involves spells in The Glasshouse prison, time spent in POW camps, letters across the sea, and an opening scene involving a wedding funded by rationing books.

Lynn says, “My mum stayed at home in Middlesbrough and worked for Price’s Tailors whilst my dad (who was known as Gilly) went away to war.

“Mum had wanted to join up but her health wasn’t good enough, so off he went and she stayed here.

“They missed each other a lot as they’d courted for six years and now he was sent away.

“He came back to get married and had to use war rations to pay for their wedding outfits and had to have a second-hand wedding ring.

“The party went on for a week at Elsie's parents house on Crescent Road in Middlesbrough and then he went away again, but not for long.

“Elsie would see him off at the station and would go home and Gilly would be back within an hour, and of course, he was AWOL, so got into trouble.

“He got arrested three times for going AWOL, and the Red Caps would turn up and take him off to The Glasshouse, which was an awful place to be, they really put him through it in there, but he didn’t care -it was worth it to go see her.

“When he was away Gilly was stationed in Cologne, Germany and worked as a rifleman and moved onto working as a guard responsible for looking after German POW’s.

“He became friends with one of the prisoners who was an artist and he drew a portrait of Gilly and a third anniversary card to send to Elsie, and they are two things that I have of theirs that I treasure now.”

“When Gilly came home from the war, he had changed a little, which isn’t surprising considering some of the things he saw and he had bad nerves for the rest of his life.

"They were married for about 45 years by the time my Dad died and Mum never stopped missing him, just like in the war.”

Speaking to my Mum made me realise that these people who I’d only ever seen as laid back grandparents, had once been young like me, with the same daft dreams and hopes and a belief in love that most of my cynical generation have forgotten about, and I’m glad that I took the time to discover the stories behind the photographs.

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