Thursday, December 7

Forgotten Treasures



Today I went up the attic, as as lot of us do at this time of year, to dig the Christmas decorations out. And as usual whilst I was up there I had a root about, you know the story, long forgotten old photos "did I really dress like that"and "what was that drunk at the party called". Then from a box in a dark corner I pulled out two dusty old leather bound books with "Autographs" printed in gold leaf on the covers. Now when we see an autograph book we think of a collection of signatures of pop or sport stars, but these books date from 1912- 1930 and the idea back then was for friends, family and acquaintances to write a verse, draw a picture or cartoon. "So what" you may say, but what I find special about one of the books in particular is that a lot of the entry's are finished with "somewhere in France" and "on active service" obviously written by first world war soldiers fighting in the trenches and battlefields of France. I wonder if Horace Dickinson survived the war, he wrote on sept 16th 1915 " Our way is not perhaps the best, but if our aims are high, our disappointments are lest , and not to cause our hope to die" he was from Bolton but on active service in France. I have added a couple of picture from the books, as usual click to enlarge and if anybody wants to see more just say so in the comment box.

9 comments:

Dunc said...

Yes please, let's see some more of those - get the scanner smoking!

It's always a pleasure to feel the curtains of time being parted by seeing something built, written, drawn or made by someone that's probably no longer about.

Bill said...

Here Here, I agree, lets see more

Bill
www.ukradiojock.blogspot.com

Peggy said...

I bet we could find out if Horace survived the war. Try to figure out the regiment and then we can search the service records . . . I love stuff like this!

Very interesting post!

bob mullen said...

I will post some more as time allows. Peggy-the only stuff I can make out is RAMC which I guess is the medical cor stretcher bearers etc and mention of the BEF and 2nd field ambulance.

Anonymous said...

What does the first one say?

where you from ????

Cant quite make it out

bob mullen said...

anon- if you double click the photos they will enlarge

Anonymous said...

I really enjoy reading your blog. If you get the chance, I would love to see more of those pictures. Traci

Anonymous said...

This stuff is great. It's part of history and really deserves a site of its own.

Anonymous said...

My neighbor across the street showed me a very similar cartoon that had been drawn on the stair support down in his basement. Only this cartoon featured GI's fighting the Japanese from WWII.

Very similar in appearance and general theme though. Interesting historical stuff.