Family Of Four: 46 - Calling Men To The Colours
...Bobby sometimes went to the Town Hall where the Tribunal sat and grew to know the building quite well, wandering about until Daddy was free to leave. He had one exciting incident.
Waiting one morning for Daddy to join him, quiet and unnoticed by those present, he suddenly saw the man being interviewed whip out a revolver shouting that he was not going to the war, and would shoot them all rather than be sent. He held the weapon steady in his hand, pointing it straight at Daddy who had risen to confront this unexpected danger...
Mrs Vivien Hirst recalls wartime drama on civvy street.
Mrs Hirst's rich memories were gathered into a book, Family Of Four, by her nephew, Raymond Prior.
Bobby sometimes went to the Town Hall where the Tribunal sat and grew to know the building quite well, wandering about until Daddy was free to leave. He had one exciting incident.
Waiting one morning for Daddy to join him, quiet and unnoticed by those present, he suddenly saw the man being interviewed whip out a revolver shouting that he was not going to the war, and would shoot them all rather than be sent. He held the weapon steady in his hand, pointing it straight at Daddy who had risen to confront this unexpected danger.
The man's back was towards Bobby, the three men facing were powerless to do anything. Bobby, silent and quiet as any mouse, edged his way to the door, luckily just ajar, slipped out and flew desperately for the Police, time being saved by his knowledge of the passages leading to the Police Station. This was very thrilling for the boy, and very unnerving too.
Daddy, to cover Bobby's prompt withdrawal, with his colleagues engaged the man in conversation, talking in a sympathetic and conciliatory way so that when the Police arrived on the scene the immediate danger had passed, and the man allowed himself to be disarmed.
I remember Daddy, all this time, working at very high pressure, for the casualty lists grew longer and longer and it was urgent that reinforcements should be sent for training in a steady stream. He would rush in for a quick dinner, eat it at speed, and always run down the road, his coat flying, to catch the tram. It became a great strain, and most certainly aged Daddy considerably.
He also made a series of recruiting appeals. Several times a tram went round chosen districts making stops at calculated points. Daddy, surrounded by a small group of men, stood on the outside platform and began to collect a crowd, for his voice rang through the side streets and as the people gathered, many no doubt out of idle curiosity, they remained attentive and absorbed, for the man's reasoned fervour and burning patriotism never failed to stir and thrill them.
Bobby and I had a fine time between stops, rushing about upstairs, turning the backs of the seats this way and that, feeling that the tram belonged only to us. On one occasion a tram was illuminated, and the soft, muted reflections of the deep blues and greens, with the reds and yellows dimmed and glowing, made a wonder place; it was like an Aladdin's cave of jewels; and Bobby and I sat quietly, enjoying the transformation.
There were other recruiting meetings. One was held in the Park before a vast crowd, Daddy making his appeal from the small hill where in more peaceful days we had watched the fireworks at Whitsuntide. We were near him, Mummy trying to gauge the response, for I suppose Daddy never knew if all his generous giving up of time and energy to make these appeals called many men to the "Colours".
After his sudden death in 1925 an appreciation appeared in the Huddersfield Examiner, and then we knew that one, at least, had realised Daddy's great effort, and we wished so much that he could have known. A correspondent wrote as follows:-
"Can you find room for this brief appreciation from "an outsider" of your great fellow-townsman, Mr. F.W. Hirst, whose sudden "call" has been quite a shock to everyone who knew this all-too-rare embodiment of that ideal - "nature's gentleman". I shall never forget my introduction to those qualities which made his real bigness.
Once when on leave I saw and heard a man rouse an audience in Greenhead Park by a speech which will always stick in my memory as a passionately fervent yet analytically perfect and closely reasoned appeal for that unity which won the war. With such men here we over there simply couldn't lose: for "the policy of honesty" was by "the might of right" transformed into that "expediency of principle" which sustains
men and nations in any vital crisis.
I saw the account of his death on my return from the meeting of the British Association, where amongst all the men there whose names are as household words not one will shine more clearly in the realm of character and personal worth than the great patriot who has so very quietly "crossed the bar". *
* The policy of honesty - the might of right - the expediency of principle: still in 1993 the motto of the Huddersfield Examiner Newspaper (by courtesy of whom the extract is quoted).
