225675 George Brearley British Army 2nd Btn. Grenadier Guards Former miner George Brearley was a regular soldier, with the 2nd Battalion, Grenadier Guards. He had landed in France on 13th August 1914 and after heavy fighting on 1st September a wounded comrade visited his brother to tell him that he had seen a shell burst, “blowing him to smithereensâ€.
As his family grieved, the reality was that George Brearley was alive, a prisoner of the Germans. Before they got to him he managed to scribble a note on a scrap of paper and placed it in a sealed bottle in the hope that someone would pass the message on to his family. “If this paper is found will you please write to this address – Mrs. Davis, Star Inn, Bulwell, Notts., England and tell them George is well.â€
As unlikely as it sounds, the message was picked up a couple of weeks afterwards by a French civilian after the Germans had been forced to retreat from the area. Dutifully, he forwarded the message to Cissie Davis who had the covering letter translated by a French teacher at the Coventry Road School in Bulwell.
Despite this, George's family still doubted that he was alive and even when they received a postcard from him, it was thought that it was probably a forgery. However, the family was eventually convinced when they recognised him in a photograph of a working party in a German POW camp at Doeberitz, near Berlin. Somehow a newspaper published in Pennsylvania was sent to offices of the Dispatch. Staff there recognised George Brearley as the man, shovel in hand, digging a drainage ditch under the supervision of a German officer. Even then one family member did not believe that it was him.
The story of the sighting of him in the newspaper photograph is almost as unlikely as a message written in a bottle being discovered on a battlefield. It is true nevertheless.
George Brearley returned to Hucknall after the Armistice more than four years later.
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