Talking To Parents.

[gness]

An acquaintance of mine has found some items his dad made during WW2 when he was away from family for so long.
He knows nothing about them, where they were made etc.. He knows his dad didn't want to go over dreadful experiences but wishes he had maybe asked him a little more.
This got Dave and I talking about our parents. How much of their lives and experiences we were told.
My dad, one of sixteen children, died when I was eighteen. In those eighteen years he told me just one story about him and an uncle. I don't know where he lived when he went to the UK in the 40s. What he did. Where he worked.
I have found out so much more since moving here and he came from a really interesting family. How I wish he had shared more with me.

Did your parents share with you?

[jno]

write out what you know anyway, Barsel, they may change their minds. I wrote up my family history back to the 1600s and had it printed in a 100-page book. There are still a lot of holes - my English ancestors have the best records, Scots and Irish not so much and the ones from Asia and Africa impossible to trace, though I know from DNA tests they existed.

[Peter Pedant]

spoiler - - there was also a tv prog about this
A Doctor's War is written by an unrelated MacCarthy.
They are all based in Ireland. The widow foinds a sard. Holy Mudda of Gard, it is Japanese and inscribed for "the extra that you did for us". And no one knows a fracking ting. teeng

well he is a POW of a special kind ( FEPOW), and in Nagasaki. His title is obi-san. Anyone good at Japanese numbers? That is no 1 man. He wasnt SBO ( senior british officer) of the POW camp for the Brits in Nagasaki was he?

yes he was - - and the widow knows notting? so she insists

and he gets the sword after his work for the injured after THE bomb.

and the family know notting of dis? Yup. They even have his autobiography, lying presumably unread around the house

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aidan_MacCarthy

(the workers were told not to leave "their dug outs on Monday" so they survived. I had thought the allies got no word in or out of the POW camps on the mainland) - - self printed I think

My father wrote his autobiography and cdnt get it published - no USP ( unique selling point). Others that DID
a. witness to massacre at Wormhout 1940. Same lot did it again at Malmedy 1945. (*)
b. sappers relaid 6 m railway track to get to Odessa and hopped on a boat. The alternative? a gulag.
c. mined out ( gt escape etc)
d.Germans wanted a Brit (POW) at the newly discovered Katyn massacre site. Germans said the Russian had done it. Russians said it was German. ( Borrie - cousin of fella who rewrote Roxburgh's Skin Diseases)

whilst I am at it - Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front is worfa read. She was ( at the Russian Front 1917)
1916 POW of the Turks after the disaster at Kut? Witch of Endor

[gness]

This has, for me, been really interesting. So many of us wondering.
Prudie with her homes, Barry's dad's first wife, Pasta and her family history.
Unlike BM I only had two grandparents who died when I was young.

I recently found out where my Kerry grandparents are buried. In a field up the mountain with, like Barsel's, no headstone. Every grave has just a rock above with no inscription.

School projects are a good idea, Jno.

Early night after a long day with six dining chairs that needed the breaking wind noise when sat on sorted.
As I say....interesting. Will look in again tomorrow.

Thanks all. Sleep well. Gx