229565 Gunner Edgar Ernest "Snowy" Parkes Royal Field Artillery from:Dawlish Rd, Selly Oak Birmingham and later 14 Brent Rd Stirchley Birmingham 30 now Kings Heath. Edgar Ernest Parkes was my much loved Grandpa. He was always called Ernie, and also known to friends as Snowy, presumably since he had very fair hair! We are all inheritors of that blonde gene in the family.
Ernie signed up immediately along with a couple of pals, in late summer 1914. He would have been 16 then so I think he lied about his age. He had only recently met Charlotte, called Lottie, who was to become his wife in 1921 and was from a miserable home background, she had moved into a room in a friends house in Bourneville to have a better quality of life, and that was how she met Ernie. Her friend was "walking out" with his friend! The girls must have been devastated to learn that the boys were signed up for war in France... Or maybe they were proud.
Ernie trained to ride a horse and is pictured in his uniform with riding crop and spurs in a photo inscribed "with love to mother and all" just before they were shipped in early 1915. He was one of 8 siblings and his father had read quite young so mother meant the world to him.
Ernie rode the gun carriages and pulled the ammo up to the front. It must have been a shock to the boy from a leafy working class suburb of a Midland's city. He used to tell me he could speak some French after being there... Which consisted of the song Hinkey Dinkey Parlez Vous? And the phrase San fairy Ann (ca me fait rien) ... " no worries // That doesn't matter" I became a French teacher so always smile when I remember that!! Anyway, Ernie was thrown from his horse at St Quentin and semi conscious, wounded very badly. He had lost an eye. Amazingly he must have been rescued from the shell crater and stretchered off behind the lines, as my Nan told she had a telegram saying he was recuperating I think it was in Norfolk.
He was re- enrolled months later they were so desperate, but somehow made it home to Lottie in the end. His mother had to hose him down in the yard and cut him out of his uniform it was so filthy. All his life he had a lump on his forehead where the shrapnel was lodged. I remember him letting me touch it and telling me the tale. He would sing "the happy wanderer" and taught me to whistle the tune. Never sad, always busy, he embraced life back home, planting a lovely garden where he grew all his own vegetables, and founding a local football club, Selly Oak FC.
He adored my Dad, his only child, and insisted he learn piano. The house was always full of music and Grandpa had a fine voice. He loved Christmas! He was a heavy smoker, Park Drive or Capstan ever at his side. He was employed at the Aerial motor cycle factory until it closed in the 1930s( now the site of Birmingham University halls of residence) never allowed to drive a car, he wore either an eye patch or a glass eye in the empty socket and had a motorbike and side car! What a character, what a life.
I am so grateful he made it back from the trenches, I found his pink metal registration card in the records at Kew. Ernie passed away in 1966 aged 68. My eldest son looks just like him if you pop a cap on his head it is Ernie in the 1915 photo. When I read any novel set in WW 1 it makes me reflect on what he went through and shed a tear or two, I only regret he didn't live a bit longer so I could have asked him more... And finally taught him some French!
|