WW1 Prisoners of War made to work

Saw a film on TV this week called Land of Mines.  Danish made and tells the story of a group of young German POWs after the end of WW2 being compelled to clear landmines on a Danish beach, with the inevitable consequences.

Reminded me that my cousin Harold Daynton had a similar experience in WW1.  He had been captured near Albert,in France in February 1918  and had been shipped off to Germany.   They were asked to volunteer for work as carpenters and as conditions in the camp were so bad many did so in the hope of better rations.  They were disappointed as then a group of the men where  taken back to battlefields in  France their "carpentry" work job being to locate and make safe booby-trapped buildings which the Allies had vacated in the massive German Attack of 21st march. 

They moved around with their Guards to various locations for different tasks. They apparently got on well with the four Guards who sympathised with their situation but explained how short of food and other vital supplies in Germany  actually were. They stayed with these Guards for the remainder of the war, receiving no rations so living  on what food they could steal or acquire. 

 On 11 November they all shook hands, with the Germans walking eastwards and the 10 British POW’s walking westwards. That took quite a time as they were actually released somewhere in the triangle of  Aachen/Verviers/Maastricht and their long trudge took until late November when they reached Calais. They finally reached England on a ship on December 2nd.

Tell it to the Marines

My Mums uncle, Edward Eder joined the Royal Marine Light Infantry

at the age of 19 in 1881. Served for twelve years in Gibraltar, Malta  and Egypt, including  the Sudan during the Mahdi rebellions but was not involved in the disastrous Siege of Khartoum as far as I can gather.  But he did receive the Egyptian Medal and the Khedive Star so he must have been around somewhere.

Left the Marines in 1894, mostly earned good conduct pay having spent only seven days in the cells which for the army of the time was good going over a period of just over twelve years.

Obviously he  did not settle to civilian life as he signed up again in May 1901 into the Royal Garrison Artillery and remained in until May 1905 spending most of his time in Gibraltar.  

There is a family story that Edward visited his Grandfather in Trieste during his military service but this seems unlikely as the journey from Gibraltar would have taken quite a long time.

When the first world war came along Edward signed up again in October 1915 but was discharged in December as being "unlikely to become an efficient soldier".  

According to his Service record Edward was 5 foot 6 and half inches when he joined in 1881 but was 5 foot nine and half inches in 1894.  Obviously the good life in the Marines. 

The qwerty keyboard and me.

 I have had an association with the qwerty keyboard for something like 72 years and sadly it appears to be coming to an end.  I am still a reasonably competent touch typist but an unexplained damage to my left wrist some four months ago has meant that I have not been able to use my left hand for typing and I think I am l;osing the ability to do so.

Many two finger typists would consider that not to be a problem.  But if you learned touchtyping all those years ago then that is the only way you can type.  The constant repetion of familiar keys when learning to touch type means that the fingers automatically go to the correct key to press without having to think about it.  I think this is called muscle memory consolidation.  Your right hand then  does not necessarily  know where the keys normally pressed by the left are located. 

I tried to use speech recognition software but the skill involved in thinking and talking at the same time is completely diferent to thinking and typing at the same time.  I used to be fairly competent in having my fingers on the keyboard keeping up  with my mental flow when I was writing, say  for instance something like a blog.   But to dictate to the computer and watch the words coming up  on the screen inhibits the thought flow.  At least  does for me.