During the war (that’s WWII of course; when I mention or talk about the war that’s usually the one I mean) my Uncle Ernie a younger, (unmarried at the time although I believe he wed later in life) brother to my dad, who had quite a few siblings ( I was going to write brothers and sisters then I remember what Churchill supposedly said “why use a dozen words when one will suffice”); was in the Royal Air Force stationed in the Shetland Isles. He was not aircrew.
From time to time he wrote to my mother (I recall many times when my mother was in conflict with my dad and I had to sit and listen to her she would say she should have married Ernie – I for one am glad she didn’t), and he would send a message to my brother and me (my sister Carole wasn’t a twinkle in my dads eye at the time).
In one of his letters he promised to send me a Shetland Pony, he never did!
😦
Uncle Ernie was, by trade, a tailor. According to my mother ‘a Master Tailor’ and I suppose he was; he was on Saville Row and I was led to believe he had his own store on ‘The Row’.
I can only recall seeing him the once, that was the day we all left England in February 1951 he came to farewell us at the railway station in London I think it might have been Euston Station; anyway he was the only relation there to see us off, if memory serves me correctly, which it normally does.
He was somewhat taller than my dad, elegantly dressed wearing a dark suit, overcoat and a black Homburg, complete with a thin mustache à la Clark Gable (though at the time I didn’t know who Clark Gable was, my mother did and she made the comment to us later).
Probably why my mother had fancied him in the first place he was a handsome man no doubt about it I remember him quite clearly from that one brief meeting, but he wasn’t a man of inner substance like my dad.
LordBeariOfBow 