The 1939-45 period is only sparsely recorded in our archives - men were away from home, few tourists visited and sent postcards, there was a general news blackout... It was interesting, therefore, to be contacted recently by Phil Bradshaw in connection with his grandfather Alfred Bradshaw (left), who found himself stationed in the village for several months in the Spring of 1941. Phil writes: Alfred Bradshaw was originally from Stafford, and joined up a few months earlier. He had originally been with a different unit and was moved up from Leeds. When based at Yetholm he was with Army Medical Corps, as part of the 196th Field Ambulance unit. They started to arrive towards the end of 1940 (but the unit was still forming at this time). There would have been around 200 men from this particular RAMC unit there. By April of '41 they had moved to a place near Bury, Lancashire. Alfred's service record, with references to Yetholm, is shown below. One wonders why Yetholm was chosen for this unit and what kind of training the men received here - and where 200 men could have been accommodated? Phil writes that: 'I'm not sure where they stayed, another member of the unit says that a few of them were first put up at the village hall for a night or two, before going on to proper quarters.' The 'village hall' must have been the Wauchope Hall, but where were these 'proper quarters'?
Phil has also sent us a memory of their time in Yetholm by another member of the 196th Field Ambulance Unit, Alan Nixon: We were drafted to the Scottish Border village of Yetholm, and it was a great billet in the winter of 1940-1. The people were very kind to us and we made many friends. We used to go to the village pub for a pint and a Scottish pub-goer there nearly always treated us to a Drambui each as a chaser, my first introduction to it, which has led to a life-long love of the stuff. We had daily marches and drilled around the village during which times we had to suffer snowballing attacks from the local kids. This countinued until the NCO in charge of us got fed up and said "right lads" and we turned around and gave chase with a barrage of our own. Then as a treat we trooped back to the local bakers to sample the freshly-baked bread. It was certainly a happy three or four month period in Scottish Yetholm. We left there in Spring when the Border hills were looking their best, with some sense of regret. These happy memories contrast with the subsequent grim fate of the unit. They were sent to Singapore and were taken prisoner by the Japanese in February 1942. Many of them never returned home, although Alfred was liberated in Thailand in August 1945 and arrived back in Southampton in October of that Year. A prison index card from his time as prisoner of the Japanese is shown below. It is somewhat ironic that one the few records we have relating to Yetholm in the WW2 period is about a German prisoner - a subject for a later blog - who was held here (and worked on local farms), while men from Britain were scattered elsewhere around the world.
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18/7/2022 09:18:19 pm
https://www.sondakika06.com/haber/11367249/gelir-yuvan-basvurusu-yap-gelir-yuvan-yardim-basvurusu-nasil-yapilir
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