- Contributed byÌý
- CSV Action Desk/´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Lincolnshire
- People in story:Ìý
- Peter Tattersall, Harry Tattersall
- Location of story:Ìý
- Gibraltar; England
- Background to story:Ìý
- Royal Air Force
- Article ID:Ìý
- A5731166
- Contributed on:Ìý
- 13 September 2005
Harry Tattersall on the left. Picture taken during the war, possibly 1943. Picture on right is of his son Peter taken in 2002 on a visit to Gibraltar to see where his father had served.
My father, Harry Tattersall, left Gibraltar on 12th May, 1944 and was posted to 179 Squadron RAF St Eval, 19 Group, Cornwall where he remained until demobilisation at RAF Kirkham Lancashire on 1st October 1945. I remember him coming home kitted out in his new ‘demob suit’. Not long afterwards he was taken ill and it was found he had contracted tuberculosis while abroad. He spent some time in a sanatorium at Grange-over —Sands, Lancashire , where he discovered a talent for sketching and watercolour painting. I still have these today. The treatment was not successful and he came home but was unable to resume full-time employment. The illness finally took its toll and he passed away on 14th May 1955 just I arrived home from Germany on compassionate leave where I was doing my National Service in the Grenadier Guards.
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In the summer of 2002 my wife and I visited Gibraltar for the first time and I took some of my father’s snapshots with me to trace some of the places in them. My wife took a photograph of me under the Wellington Monument in the Almeda Gardens. Leaning, legs crossed against the cannon with my hand on it, it was an exact copy of a photograph my father sent home of himself in the very same pose some 60 years earlier. This was a very strong and moving experience for me before we left for our flight back to the United Kingdom.
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