THE UNTOLD STORY OF WILLIAM AND TOM so that we can give thanks to all those represented by the poppies planted in commemoration at the Tower before memory fades into the frenzy of Christmas.
Patriotic fever, uncertainty and a touch of sadness are in the air. The year is 1915. Our country is at war. This is the moving story of two men, both connected to my family.
The first, my great grandfather William Ralph Wootton, was born in 1877 in Ardwick Manchester. The other, born in Bedfordshire in 1884 many miles away, Thomas Henry Seamer, my husband’s grandfather.
Two young men leaving their families, not sure of their future, but that is where the similarity ends. One returned and sadly one did not.
The father of five sons, William Ralph, Lance Corporal Wootton (2748) of the 5/7th Lancashire Fusiliers was killed on the 9th August 1915 in Gallipoli. He met his bloody end a few weeks after joining up in the battle of Krithie Vineyard.
My poor great grandmother paid the price as he did, for the ‘Hell Let Loose’ campaign, (a term coined by one of the battalion survivors). Now the repercussions started. My grandfather, William Richard, the oldest son, had to go out to work to support the family. As well as losing his dad, his dreams of further education as he was such a bright lad, were scuppered. He never got over this and remained resentful.
Years later, he and his brothers were working in a mill in Lancashire when Winston Churchill visited. As they blamed him for their father’s death, due to the mishandling of the Gallipoli conflict, all five of then turned their backs on him and continued working, as Churchill walked down the aisles. Each of the Wootton brothers had their pay docked for not switching off their machines. Such feelings are understandable, as sadly they had all paid the price of growing up without their father.
In my hand, there is a faded brown leather wallet, a bullet, and a selection of torn letters. Their owner was my husband’s late grandfather, Private Tom Henry Seamer of the 1/8 Middlesex Battalion who fought at Ypres in France. One of these was from his little daughter Lizzie, saying ‘she looked like a toff in her new coat’ and ‘please come home soon daddy’.
The other one was from his employer who owned a flour mill in Hertford. The rich owner of the business, wrote from Falmouth on his honeymoon, to Tom in the trenches.
‘We are having a blissful time. The weather is beautiful. You wouldn’t have thought there was a war on here Seamer because all the men are away’.
One evening whilst on active service, Tom took out his prayer book to read a psalm and noticed that… a stray bullet had penetrated the wallet which he kept in his breast pocket.
This had ripped through his letters and photographs but miraculously, because of its full contents, his life had been saved.
Private Tom Henry Seamer did return to Hertford after the war to his wife and daughter, taking up his old job with the mill, driving a cart and his horse. Life in the trenches was rarely talked about to friends and family. Always at the back of his mind, he would have realised that he was a survivor, whilst too many of his friends were not. I suspect a great loneliness was his companion as he went through life.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Lance Corporal Wootton and Private Seamer and written by Wendy Breckon, (nee Wootton) x
