245984 Pte. Harold Octavius "Charlie" Hutchinson British Army 8th Battalion Middlesex Regiment from:North Shields, Northumberland Our late dad, Harold Hutchinson affectionately known by his side of the family as Charlie, grew up in Percy Main on Tyneside in the 1910s and 1920s. He was the youngest of 8 children, his parents losing the first-born twin boys only months after their birth. His dad worked on the ship-building side of the local economy, which was focused on shipping out the locally-mined coal (hence Percy Main as in the main coal-seam). He was to be orphaned by the age of 13 or 14 and was placed in the Tynemouth Workhouse, being taken in by his older sister for short periods when she had enough money to feed him.
He later moved to London in search of work and signed up for the 8th Batallion of the Middlesex Regiment upon war-time call-up in 1940. He and his army colleagues initially spent quite a long time training in various parts of the country before eventually being deployed in Europe, being a qualified driver for his regiment, which operated alongside the Wessex Regiment and was also known as the Machine Gun Regiment.
He sustained back injuries in action and returned home to recuperate before being re-deployed at the London garage of London and Country Buses. He was de-mobbed at the end of the War, by which time he was father to an 19 month old son and a second son, only weeks old. He took the boys and their mother to stay with one of his older brothers near Ipswich, and they were soon able to rent a requisitioned empty estate-cottage some 10 or so miles away in the middle of the countryside.
Our parents eventually married and our dad worked as a building labourer for a good many years, including working on laying concrete sleepers on the East Coast railway line and working on the construction of one of the Sizewell nuclear power stations. His last job was on a plant nursery in our home village before he retired and moved to a more modern rented bungalow in a neighbouring village. He died there in 1993 and a plaque on a memorial bench near his final resting place commemorates his life.
|