Your Uncles

[HarryBettsMCDCM]

Just occasionally one finds in a box of old tomes @ a Car Boot sale,a little Gem!,A couple of Fridays ago I was @ a loose end having dropped no 2 son off at work & having 6 hours to kill before starting work,I popped along to the local Friday Car Boot,usually a waste of effort & petrol & the 30 pence entry fee if truth betold!!However ever the optomist I wandered around & one of the regulars had a box or six of old books of varying interests,digging through I found a History of the RAF Club titled "128";an interesting little book on the Thracian Wars from 1904,A reprinted book of the original manuscript of the "Plimouth" emigres to the USA in the 17th Century & a book of World Ceramic Marks from the 1920s,I was just about to ask "How Much?" when my eye was caught by a small dull looking blue cloth bound book,about a half inch thick with the title "Your Uncles" impressed in gold on the front,almost ignoring it to be a pre 1900 novella,I did however open the frontispiece to find a photograph of a Midshipman and the legend "Christopher Cooke Midshipman HMS Vanguard 1916".Intrigued I delved deeper & found the book to be a privately written & printed tome intended for the authors children to keep alive the memory of his Brothers one of whom had been killed on the explosion aboard HMS Vanguard in 1917,the three others his younger brothers all of whom had been casualties of a later War 1939~45,two in the RAF & one a RM Commando.needless to say this concluded my purchases & proved to be a great little Family History of the Cooke Family,of Cambridge & other cities...

Initials: C A G

Nationality: United Kingdom

Rank: Midshipman

Regiment/Service: Royal Navy

Unit Text: H.M.S. "Vanguard."

Age: 18

Date of Death: 09/07/1917

Additional information: Son of Arthur Cooke, F.R.C.S., and Lucy Vivien Cooke, of Grove Lodge, Cambridge.

Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead

Grave/Memorial Reference: 20.

Memorial: CHATHAM NAVAL MEMORIAL