Harry: part 3
Part three after the cut.
Whilst back on dry land he went home to Oxfordshire/Berkshire, and there met Olive (my grandmother) who was working at a supply depot in Steventon.
They got married in 1946. (I can’t draw them in front of the church they got married at since at some point in the 1970s it was replaced by some odd old people’s home-church combined, and I have no idea what the original looked like). They went to live with Olive’s family in Redoubt Street, Radford.
Their first two children, my mother and her brother, were born in 1947 and 1948. My grandmother dressed them alike quite frequently, and both were named after cowboys in a radio show.
Post world war two Nottingham, like many big cities, had a housing shortage. Since it was getting a bit crowded living with Olive’s parents (and the rest of the family living in other houses in the street, probably a bit of an in-law overload) Harry decided to move the family to Oxfordshire.
His view of this period of time is of an idyllic time, my mother is less convinced. They lived quite close to a government testing farm (Ministry of Food I imagine) and she can recall seeing, what were to her, giant sheep and chickens (nowadays pretty average sized).
My grandad’s next posting was in Berlin. He was interviewing people escaping across the Berlin Wall from the East. At first he was in Germany alone, and then the Navy sent Olive and the children (now three of them) to join him. For a while the family lived in Mönchengladbach which was probably my mother’s favourite part of her childhood.
Tags: drawings, history, story
This is fabulous! I love family history (mine mostly obviously, but other people’s is fascinating too). It makes me a little sad though because I never had the opportunity to sit down with my grandparents and find out about *them* (or I did, but by the time I realised it was too late).
I love your little illustrations; they’re far better than I could do
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Thank you
I know what you mean about not realising at the time. I certainly don’t know anything past their names for my paternal grandparents, which seems very remiss on my part.