Hanson Museum in the News

The Museum @ Hanson was featured in a doble page spread article in the Telegraph & Argus recently, a copy of which can be seen below:

When classmates Harry Joint and Jack Anderson signed up for the RAF in World War Two, neither one would have imagined that they would both be killed during the same bombing operation over Berlin on 3^rd January 1943.  They had been allocated to different squadrons based at different airfields many miles apart and it was unlikely that they would have realised they were part of the same mission.  This is just one of the many tragic stories uncovered by local genealogist Sharon Knott as she researched the lives of ex-students of Hanson School who served in WW2.

Sharon has previously written two books featuring full page profiles of local men from Farnley who died in both World Wars. She is also a volunteer speaker and researcher for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) and took a lead role in tracking down the lives of the 50 young men who are commemorated on the WW1 memorial at Hanson Academy and celebrated in its own museum.

Sharon undertook the current work after reading a newspaper article which stated that there were 53 ex-Hanson students who had given their lives in service and were listed in a bible.  Staff at the Academy were unable to locate this bible but were able to supply Sharon with a leavers’ register which covered the right period for these young men to have served.  Armed with this and her other genealogy sources she has been able to track down and write up the stories for nearly fifty of these young men.  The stories are tragic, and many were the result of accidents rather than enemy engagement.  Charles Holmes age 19, for example, died as a result of a “friendly fire incident” when the aircraft that he was in was damaged by incendiaries from aircraft above, killing him and injuring the pilot and both air gunners.  Philip Verity age 24 was one of 800 Prisoners of War packed aboard an Italian cargo ship when it was torpedoed and sunk by HMS Sahib near Sicily.

Sharon’s tireless work for the Museum at Hanson has resulted in her making contact with some relatives and gaining further information about the effect on families back home in the UK.  One such contact was Jill, the niece of newly married Allan Gill who died age 21.  Allan had been in the R.A.F. for two and a half years and got his wings in Canada.  He was a Sergeant Pilot, and like so many others was killed in a tragic accident rather than in active service. The plane hit a tree descending in the cloud at night near Kemble in Gloucestershire.  What makes this story so sad is that Allan wrote a letter to his mother just five days before he was killed.

My very dear mother,

How are you love?  Ok and in the best of health I hope.  I have had a letter from Edith today telling me she has got the house set up etc., but when she told me the price of the decorating I could have dropped.

She’ll have probably told you by now the bill was £20.7.0 dammed wicked but there it is.  If you want anything today you have to pay through the nose for it and I am only just beginning to realise this and what a struggle you have had with financial matters.

You know mother that I will do whatever I can to help you and if ever you are really in great need of money tell me straight away.  Just at the moment we have a bit of debt with furnishing and painting and little things like that which when xxxxx        but as soon as I get this debt paid off I will see that you get another 15 shillings or £1 added onto your pay, which I will send on each pay day.  Just now, as I said before we are not too well off but when that debt is paid off I will be able to give you that little bit extra.  I don’t know what I’d have done without you mother and the things you have given us and Edith and myself will do all that we can for you and you know that mother.

I hope to be coming home on leave a week next Sunday or Monday providing the weather keeps fine and I can get the hours in.  I’m looking forward to this leave mother, because I was stationed near home so long and coming home so often has that I am afraid its made me soft and homesick, but I am not the only one.  I suppose all the other chaps are the same and fed up of the rotten war.

Well mother I will have to close now as I am night flying so until later on love cheerio and all my love to you and Dorothy and Grandma and aunties.

Your loving son Allan

PTO

PS We’ll also buy you that new coat when we get turned round love

Allan

Another letter to his younger sister Dorothy, than aged 16, was written the day after the D Day landing and includes reference to being “busy after the invasion”.  Just a young man believing that he had a rosy future with his wife Edith.

These stories and many more can be seen at the Museum at Hanson Academy by contacting Brian Russell via email Russellb1@hanson.org.uk.  The museum is particularly keen to make contact with relatives of other ex-students who served in either of the World Wars but anyone who has a story to share.