Family Of Four: 45 - Oh We Don't Want To Lose You
...Opposite to "The Hollies" lived a young man with his mother. We waited anxiously to see him clothed in the familiar khaki, but he continued to come and go in his usual manner. We decided that we might help him on his way! We had a Master's Voice gramophone, the early model with an enormous horn, and among the records was one of Kitchener's appeals made into a song. It went something like this:-
"Oh! we don't want to lose you
But we think you ought to go
For your King and your country
Both need you so.''...
Mrs Vivien Hirst recalls events after the outbreak of World War One.
Mrs Hirst's memories were gathered into a book, Family Of Four, by her nephew, Raymond Prior.
As time passed, Lord Kitchener's famous poster of the British Tommy pointing with an emphatic finger, appeared everywhere. "Your King and Country Need You."
The large letters embedded the need in everyone's mind, and now began the looking askance at those young men still about who were not in uniform and doing their bit. We, in our turn, filled with a burning patriotism passed down from Daddy, resolved to do our bit!
Opposite to "The Hollies" lived a young man with his mother. We waited anxiously to see him clothed in the familiar khaki, but he continued to come and go in his usual manner. We decided that we might help him on his way! We had a Master's Voice gramophone, the early model with an enormous horn, and among the records was one of Kitchener's appeals made into a song. It went something like this:-
"Oh! we don't want to lose you
But we think you ought to go
For your King and your country
Both need you so..."
One of us kept watch and as soon as the neighbour was seen to close his door and walk towards his gate, our door was thrown wide open and on went the record, blaring out the insistent message day after day! Whether the young man ever knew of our intention, or whether he even heard the record, we never knew, and, of course, the pastime palled.
Daddy grieved bitterly that he was too old to become a soldier and as he could not go to the front he gave up his business and devoted himself to war work. He became a member of the Military Tribunal which proved to be a most responsible and harassing position.
There was no conscription until May 1916, and it fell to these Tribunals throughout the country to send the men into the army, or to allow them to remain as civilians. With Daddy's sensitive nature it was, to him, a terrible thing to have the power to order a man to go, of course paying regard to real hardship, such as three sons already serving, or a son running a business for his widowed mother, entirely dependent upon him. Many and many hard luck stories had to be sifted and probed to see how true they were, for as the terrible months dragged along the initial eagerness to fight for King and Country had dimmed noticeably.
