Family & Other Stories

Family Stories - Virginia Corbett

Henry Newsum

The trip had kickstarted me into sorting out much family memorabilia so, although I had not done my set Tonbridge homework ( tut tut ) I had opened dusty, boxes found more than 20 bibles and prayer books and wanted to find out more about 2 sets of brothers, who took part in WW1 . Firstly, my grandfather, Henry Newsum (Greshams) 2nd Lt in the Lincolnshires. He saw action in Gallipoli, the Somme and Passchendaele. He was seriously wounded, caught trench fever and was gassed, and shrapnel from his body, was turned into this brooch. He was apparently deliberately held back, (or possibly lots were drawn) from the same attack in which his brother Clement Neill Newsum died. We found his name at Tyne Cot. My grandfather Henry, who survived, received a military cross, but he also got a lifetime of nightmares and guilt.

Last week helped me more to understand this austere, principled immaculately dressed man.. who named his first born, my dad, Neill. A tall order to live with those expectations of an ideal, and so that war ricocheted on.

Christopher & Edmund Hartley

Secondly, I was seeking another two Lancashire brothers, on my maternal side, who were both killed, Christopher (Harrow and Merton) and Edmund Hartley (Harrow and Brasenose). Edmund's grave is in a French cemetery to which I shall return, but Christopher's grave was, extraordinarily, only four minutes walk from our Ariane hotel. He was 31 when he died at 3rd Ypres battle and was already a qualified solicitor. After the war their sister, my great granny, pregnant with her fourth child died of Spanish flu. The remaining sister wrote a sad poem about the children of the hills. She died of TB or possibly a broken heart.. ( Her son , Percival Hayman, was David Walsh s chaplain at Malborough) So those Quaker great-great-grandparents lost all their four children. My grandmother spoke highly of her beloved uncles but she lived in the here and now, and was brought up by her remarkable widowed solicitor father. They all got just on with it. She had many friends and despite everything was kind and happy. The only war reverberation was when yet another grandchild of hers was on the way she would say 'oh I prayed it wouldn't happen'. Gerald was rather put out, but I think this was only because of her own mother's death.