Thetownend.com

Going to Sheffield this Saturday will have a more special meaning to me this Saturday....in recent times i have found out that my Great Grandad was born in the city of Sheffield.
As most of you know i was brought up in care....so really didn;t get to know anything about my past untill recent years.
I research lots now and found out that my Great Grandad was born in Sheffield and lived there for many years....his dad worked in the steel trade as a grinder in Fawcett Street.....my great grandad moved back south later in life and his daughter Hettie(my nan)was born in Shepperton.

Anyhow out of the blue last week i recieved a letter from my aunt Betty who is 83 and i recieved a letter and a brilliant photo of Horace Halke....the last in the line as far as i know.
Horace is the nephew of my great grandad and it is incredible to think that he has lived through both World Wars....sadly i didn't hear of the reunion in the photo but i hope to meet him very soon.....as you can read from the photo and its contents he had a fairly tough ride in life.

Anyhow as i walk into Brammal Lane i will think of my Great Grandad...and a little bit more of the jigsaw for me will be put in place.


[url width=375 height=228]http://i934.photobucket.com/albums/ad185/swindon123/grindle.jpg[/url]

Above is Grindle Gate in Sheffield around 1880....the Street my Great Grandad would have walked as his father lived there.

[url width=900 height=675]http://i934.photobucket.com/albums/ad185/swindon123/001_zps8e90396a.jpg[/url]

Above...the Incredible Halke a few weeks back.

I swear to god there is an Amazon best-seller of Leefer posts in this forum.

Leefer, a tale of Life and Lorries. There's ya tittle.

Another great story. I'll raise a pint of magnet to him!

The poster Windle5 posting on this thread could well be distantly related to you?

http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/archive/index.php/t-668463.html

Most deffo!

Another Ancestor of mine is Ernest Halke......son of one of my great grandads brothers....if you get what i mean.

What an army life he led.

Born in the working class area of Sheffield.. Pitt Street he joined up as a young man aged 18....i have seen his entire army record and it reads like....well something incredible in my eyes.

Starting of down close to us he did training at Tdworth in 1893....the same year he was sent packing to South Africa to help the cause before the Boer War started...he was there 3 years...then  he served in India for 8 years.
Back to blighty and he served another 9 years back home including dangerous stints in Limerick and Cork...as the IRA started getting nasty.

1914 arrives WW1 starts and he is sent to Gallipoli......BEAR IN MIND HE HAD ALREADY SERVED A STAGGERING 21 YEARS!!

Aged 39 his stint in Gallipoli is brought to an end due to a severe Shrapnell wound that rips his left thigh to shreds and he is on his way back home on the Hospital Ship HMS Egypt and spend a year recovering.....this wound most probably saved his life....bearing in mind the war went on for another three years.....plenty of medals later he then spends the rest of his days in the Labour Army Corps when he was finally discharged in 1918 after 25 years of hard service.....through all that hardship he came through,how tough a man must he have been i wonder.
With the help of a decent pension(for those days) he married Gertrude White a year after his discharge and dodged the german bombs again that rained down on Sheffield in WW2!....passing away in 1946.
He must have thought the World a nasty place....seeing action in South Africa,India,Ireland and of course Gallipoli.....not forgetting blighty :eek:

His wife Gertrude died in 1974....aged 101.

I like Ernest....i like him a lot.

http://www.medaldetector.co.uk/medal-sets/halke-ernest/

The guy who runs this site got my attention...and assures me the medals he has will be returning to the family at some future stage.

Very proud of this man....the 1915 medal is a Balkan one which is farely rare i am led to believe,seeing as he served all over before WW1 he must have been as hard as rock.