´óÏó´«Ã½

My father had been a despatch rider in The Royal Corp of Signals. He was a part of the British Expeditionary force that was sent to France and had been at Dunkirk. He was amongst one of the last to leave on a pleasure craft known as the Ben Macrae, which had sailed from the North of England, to form the Armada of ‘Little Ships’. Upon his return to England, he proposed to my Mother in late June early July 1940.

In December 1940, my parents arranged to be married by a ‘Special Licence’ on Sunday the 15th December 1940. This was the weekend of the Sheffield Blitz, starting on the evening of the 12th December in which my father was caught on a train in a tunnel at the Midland Station in Sheffield. After the all clear he made his way to my mother’s home.

On the Sunday of the 15th December 1940, my parents were married at 11.00 o’clock. That evening they spent their honeymoon in an air raid shelter were upon arrival my father had been blown into the shelter by the blast from an incendiary bomb which had gone off as he was trying to close the door, whilst pulling a mother an child into the shelter. When the all clear sounded, they found that their home had been bombed. And worst of all, the church where they had wed only a few hours earlier had been bombed. They were the last people to have been married at the Parish Church of Attercliffe, Sheffield, in The West Riding of Yorkshire, (now known as South Yorkshire), as per the attached newspaper cutting which was taken from the Yorkshire Post, 1964.

There was only, one other function to have taken place after their wedding and that was a christening at 12.00 noon that day.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.