Wonderful old photograph

[wig]

This is a really terific photograph. When I was a young soldier I remember the PTI's wearing those red and white striped jumpers, like something out of the Beano. (I wonder where they came from). Here the officers are in whites, one with a cricket jumper, one in his fencing gear. I think it really belongs to its age and is quite wonderful.

wig

[stiletto_33853]

Wig,

What a great photograph.

Andy

[ackimzey]

Thanks for sharing.

[Andrew Hesketh]

When men were men! I notice fencing helmets. Surely they didn't fence with swords like that?!

I wouldn't want to argue with the chap bottom right.

Great picture. Do you have any background on it John, other than what is written on the front?

[wig]

Tall chap is Lt. Dickson, 2/7th Sherwood Foresters, newly commissioned from the Inns of Court O.T.C. and one month before going to Ireland to suppress the rising. He was shot at Mount St. Bridge but the bullet lodged in his 1914 Field pocket book. Does anyone know the size of the Field Service Pocket book as I have a photograph of his book but without a scale can make no estimate of the size of the bullet lodged therein.

wig

[johnreed]

4 3/8" x 6 1/2" x 3/4" thick.

John

[jayne w]

Is he front row third from right?

Good photo BTW - evocative is the word that springs to mind. What happened to him afterwards? Do you know?

Jayne

[wig]

The officers name is Arthur Annan Dickson of the Sherwood Foresters. He is a Scottish man and his second name, Annan is taken from the Annnadale area of West Scotland. Before the war he worked in a bank in Devon. He enlisted into the Inns of Court O.T.C. and was commissioned into the 2/7th Bttn of the Sherwood Foresters in early 1916. As a subaltern he fought in Ireland during the rising when his battalion took heavy casualties (see http://www.wfrmuseum.org.uk/rhr_Ireland.htm). He went to France in 1917 in command of a Trench Mortar Battery and was engaged in heavy fighting before being wounded at Gommecourt – shot in the neck by a German sniper. He was demobbed in 1919 and went back to the Bank, Llyods bank, where he rose to become bank manager in the picture postcard town of Bourne End, Buckinghamshire. He wrote a fictionalised account of his war as a Trench Mortar Battery commander that was never published although a few private copies were printed by his family. He is of that generation. He is why we come here. He is all our grandfathers

Is he front row third from right?

Good photo BTW - evocative is the word that springs to mind. What happened to him afterwards? Do you know?

Jayne

[Andrew Hesketh]

Some of Dickson's writing here: http://www.firstworldwar.com/diaries/varie...ftrenchlife.htm

[PhilB]

When I was a young soldier I remember the PTI's wearing those red and white striped jumpers, like something out of the Beano.

Aren`t they red and black? They don`t look evil - that must have come later in the course! Phil B