Who is This ? ? ?

[Fattyowls]

23 minutes ago, neverforget said:

Pete. I got there in the end. 

After first looking at people called Goodison or Stanley, I found this site of Liverpool V.C. winners, where the only Ww1 candidate without a picture was one Albert White. Next step was to try to track down a picture of him elsewhere and bingo. 

http://liverpoolremembrance.weebly.com/local-vc-winners.html

 

Just so NF, good detective work. The Friends of Everton Park plaque claims four VC's for the area, with the criteria that they were either born, lived or went to school there. Albert was born in nearby Kirkdale but went to Everton Terrace school. He was killed rushing a German machine gun singlehandedly at Monchy-le-Preux on 19th May; from the citation he took the bullets that would otherwise have hit his men. The park now has wildflower gardens some of which are red poppies and blue cornflowers, the remembrance flowers of the Commonwealth and France (image from evertonpark.org.uk)

 

Pete.

 

I should add as a postscript that the city does not slope like that - for once it wasn't me that took the slightly wonky photo........

[neverforget]

6 minutes ago, Fattyowls said:

 

Just so NF, good detective work. The Friends of Everton Park plaque claims four VC's for the area, with the criteria that they were either born, lived or went to school there. Albert was born in nearby Kirkdale but went to Everton Terrace school. He was killed rushing a German machine gun singlehandedly at Monchy-le-Preux on 19th May; from the citation he took the bullets that would otherwise have hit his men. The park now has wildflower gardens some of which are red poppies and blue cornflowers, the remembrance flowers of the Commonwealth and France (image from evertonpark.org.uk)

 

Pete.

 

I should add as a postscript that the city does not slope like that - for once it wasn't me that took the slightly wonky photo........

I bet it was you who planted the cornflowers though ? Nice picture.

P.S. Totally jammy guess on my part that he might be a V.C.

 

[Phil Wood]

26 minutes ago, neverforget said:

I don't think we've covered this interesting character yet. Known for amongst other things his passion for the gee gees.

 

 

Interesting indeed - if it is, as I suspect, Carl Raswan previously Schmidt, changed his name to that of a horse!

 

[Fattyowls]

11 minutes ago, neverforget said:

I bet it was you who planted the cornflowers though ? Nice picture

 

I didn't but I know the man who did; my cornflowers haven't come out this year but I've a fabulous show of really blood red opium poppies outside the window. The view from the park is stupendous, you can see Snowdon on a clear day, and the Lake District from the tower of St George's, Everton.

 

Pete.

 

[Phil Wood]

10 hours ago, neverforget said:

Donald Swain Lewis?

Carried out a successful experiment with a Royal artillery battery using a radio transmitter to communicate the fall of artillery shells. Lewis is also credited with creating the "grid square" map system which revolutionized British wartime cartography. 

His father was Ernest Lewis, one of the founding directors of the Army & Navy Stores.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Swain_Lewis

 

He is also credited as co-creator of the clock code, though I suspect the other chap (Baron James) deserves the more credit). As you note he was the first to use wireless from air to ground for gun control during the Battle of the Aisne - some sources credit him as Captain Lewis at this time, but it was a couple of days before his promotion. Another source describes him as a 'junior lieutenant' at the time - not sure if this applies to chap with 7 years seniority who was promoted a few days later.

 

Coinicidently one of his brothers was also a Brevet Major and Temporary Lt-Col when he too was killed (at Mametz on 1 July 1916).

 

interesting chap.

[neverforget]

34 minutes ago, Phil Wood said:

 

Interesting indeed - if it is, as I suspect, Carl Raswan previously Schmidt, changed his name to that of a horse!

 

Carl Raswan it is Phil. Well spotted. 

Germany's answer to T.E.L.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Raswan

[neverforget]

26 minutes ago, Fattyowls said:

 

I didn't but I know the man who did; my cornflowers haven't come out this year but I've a fabulous show of really blood red opium poppies outside the window. The view from the park is stupendous, you can see Snowdon on a clear day, and the Lake District from the tower of St George's, Everton.

 

Pete.

 

I have scattered poppies here there and everywhere around here too, and they have all sprouted nicely, except for the ones I plant in my garden, which frustratingly refuse to grow despite all my best efforts.

[Fattyowls]

I've just had a quick search and I don't think either of the WiT? threads have featured this man, although I could be wrong. NF's last post made me think of him.

 

Pete.

[Uncle George]

37 minutes ago, Fattyowls said:

I've just had a quick search and I don't think either of the WiT? threads have featured this man, although I could be wrong. NF's last post made me think of him.

 

Pete.

 

He's not the young McCrae, by any chance? I see he served in the Boer War.

[Fattyowls]

Not McCrae UG, slightly closer to home. A connection to my man has just occurred to me however which is quite interesting.

 

Pete.

[Uncle George]

4 hours ago, Fattyowls said:

 

The park now has wildflower gardens some of which are red poppies and blue cornflowers, the remembrance flowers of the Commonwealth and France ...

 

 

That's a great photo Pete. The blue and red of Liverpool, as well as everything else. One thinks of the recent Hillsborough symbols of remembrance.

 

I learn (while trying to figure out your latest) that the remembrance flower of Newfoundland is the forget-me-not.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_poppy

 

Edited 19 June , 2017 by Uncle George

[Fattyowls]

10 minutes ago, Uncle George said:

 

That's a great photo Pete. The blue and red of Liverpool, as well as everything else. One thinks of the recent Hillsborough symbols of remembrance.

 

I learn (while trying to figure out your latest) that the remembrance flower of Newfoundland is the forget-me-not.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_poppy

 

 

The park is a very photogenic location, and as someone for whom non horizontal horizons are a regular feature of my snapping efforts I was buoyed up to find I wasn't alone. It's the opposite of "when I were a lad this were all fields", as a small boy I remember the terraced streets climbing the steep slope. Havelock Street, that ran up to the summit was something like 1 in 3 and I've recently found that my great uncle Fred and his wife Nellie lived on it. My mate Ken Rogers who is the author of the local history "The Lost Tribe of Everton" used to finish his paper round on Havelock St.

 

The flowers of remembrance are an interest of mine and they and the plants used by the CWGC gardeners use in France and Belgium are the inspiration for the planting in the grounds of Owls Towers. The look I go for is a variation on cottage garden which I call derelict cottage garden. My mate Egbert confirmed that Germany like Newfoundland uses the forget-me-not (vergissmeinicht), as is well known the French le bluet, the rest of the commonwealth the common field poppy and Marilyne told me that Belgium uses the marguerite daisy.

 

The poppy is not much of a clue, as it features in one passage in my man's one work, but is not central to it. He was a regular guy with a fastidious (almost pedantic) sense of his appearance by all accounts.

 

Pete.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Uncle George said:

 

"Shedding clothes" was something of a red herring - I was going to suggest Vivian Van Damm!

 

I'm still struggling with Pete's.

 

   Ah-but all was clear in the end- that touching scene where Richard Lionheart reveals himself to Errol Flynn in "The Adventures of Robin Hood"-by bearing his smock open and showing the 3 royal leopards. Splendid stuff for a Boxing Day afternoon.

    Yes, Ian Hunter-did nothing much before or after 1938 but jobbed along. As a 17 year old from South Africa he enlisted and saw out the last year of the war(I believe,in France).

 

[Fattyowls]

7 minutes ago, voltaire60 said:

 

   Ah-but all was clear in the end- that touching scene where Richard Lionheart reveals himself to Errol Flynn in "The Adventures of Robin Hood"-by bearing his smock open and showing the 3 royal leopards. Splendid stuff for a Boxing Day afternoon.

    Yes, Ian Hunter-did nothing much before or after 1938 but jobbed along. As a 17 year old from South Africa he enlisted and saw out the last year of the war(I believe,in France).

 

 

A scene that was repeated in the Kevin Costner remake and alluded to in Ridley Scott's same era "Kingdom of Heaven'". Both times with Scottish actors playing the French speaking king........

 

On my man the picture was originally from the Paisley and Renfrewshire Gazette. I'm giving it away, I tell you.

 

Pete.

 

[neverforget]

2 hours ago, Fattyowls said:

 

A scene that was repeated in the Kevin Costner remake and alluded to in Ridley Scott's same era "Kingdom of Heaven'". Both times with Scottish actors playing the French speaking king........

 

On my man the picture was originally from the Paisley and Renfrewshire Gazette. I'm giving it away, I tell you.

 

Pete.

 

I'm quite sure you are Pete, but unfortunately I am not qualified to take advantage of your generosity.

In the meantime I thought you might enjoy this picture of the National Memorial Arboretum at Arlewas. 

[Fattyowls]

Lovely photo NF, I love that blend of wildflowers, I did something similar on a much smaller scale at Owls Towers a few years back. I was being heavily ironic with the last clue, intimating that my man is Scottish hardly narrows it down much. He did something which I think was illegal during the war, and only emerged after his death. He has a direct link to one of my footballers and an indirect link to one of the others. I'd know very little about the first footballer's death without him.

 

Pete.

[Uncle George]

On 19 June 2017 at 15:55, Fattyowls said:

I've just had a quick search and I don't think either of the WiT? threads have featured this man, although I could be wrong. NF's last post made me think of him.

 

Pete.

 

Perhaps he is Brian Brooke: big-game hunter, Masai blood-brother; brother of James Brooke VC.

 

http://forgottenpoetsofww1.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-poet-wounded-on-24th-july-1916-brian.html

 

[Fattyowls]

17 minutes ago, Uncle George said:

 

Perhaps he is Brian Brooke: big-game hunter, Masai blood-brother; brother of James Brooke VC.

 

http://forgottenpoetsofww1.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-poet-wounded-on-24th-july-1916-brian.html

 

 

Not Brooke UG, but he is a very interesting man, and a reminder that I need to email Lucy who runs Forgotten Poets, thank you. My man would probably not see himself as literary but his writings have 'I was there' immediacy and real feeling. The first book of Sassoon's Sherston trilogy could equally apply to him too.

 

Pete.

[neverforget]

8 hours ago, Fattyowls said:

 

Not Brooke UG, but he is a very interesting man, and a reminder that I need to email Lucy who runs Forgotten Poets, thank you. My man would probably not see himself as literary but his writings have 'I was there' immediacy and real feeling. The first book of Sassoon's Sherston trilogy could equally apply to him too.

 

Pete.

Ok. So we're looking at a somewhat vain fox-hunting jock pensmith, with scouse footballing connections. 

Certainly eliminates everyone I know of.

Columbo. Where are you now??

[Uncle George]

15 minutes ago, neverforget said:

Ok. So we're looking at a somewhat vain fox-hunting jock pensmith, with scouse footballing connections ...

 

 

... who wrote one and one only work (which mentioned, in an aside, a poppy) and who may or may not have had some gnomic connection with John McCrae.

 

 

[Uncle George]

22 minutes ago, neverforget said:

 

Columbo. Where are you now??

 

It's not Colombo we need. "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." 

[neverforget]

12 minutes ago, Uncle George said:

 

It's not Colombo we need. "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." 

You tak the high road and I'll tak the low road.

[Fattyowls]

Friends, because I'm a bad person I am quite enjoying running this one out, however I honestly thought it would go just like that as the immortal T. Cooper used to say. (Man walks into a bar....goes Argh! It was an iron bar....Try to imagine a big man in a fez telling it).

 

The Everton connection is not to the club based in Walton on Merseyside, but the one in Vina del Mar in Chile. My man's illegal item was taken up by a controversial figure in WW1 scholarship who swam against the prevailing tide, and the poppies he mentions grew here (photo courtesy of John Knight of Silent Picket fame):

 

 

[neverforget]

1 hour ago, Fattyowls said:

 

The Everton connection is not to the club based in Walton on Merseyside, but the one in Vina del Mar in Chile. 

Naturally! 

I didn't know there was one in Merseyside too. What a coincidence. ?

 

[neverforget]

I'm betting he actually hails from here; 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2760467/Doncaster-technically-Scotland-signed-900-years-ago-never-formally-given-back.html

Or perhaps here: 

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28225325