Chapter 21: Sergeant Eli Watson

Lancaster War Memorial, in the grounds of the Town Hall

Gordon did not tell Michael the reason why they were going for a walk one evening in May. They strolled across town just after six, after all the shops had closed for the day. They went up Church Street and into the quiet of St Mary's. The reason for Gordon going there was the anniversary of his father's death, during the Great War, near Ypres.

Gordon could be quite secretive about some things, especially things which affected him personally. He never told Michael much about his past. He was a very emotional man but had always tried to hide it. Big boys didn't cry!

Eli Watson's second regiment, The King's Own Lancaster, was formed in 1600 and was in the forefront of many Imperialist actions for over 350 years. At Culloden, it was part of the army which inflicted on the Scots a merciless drubbing and massacre. In South Africa, at the very end of the nineteenth century, it fought the Boers, in that war which saw the British build concentration camps, nearly 40 years before Hitler's. There were other actions subduing civilian populations in Abyssinia and India.

Bloody battles were fought bravely against fearsome foes all over the globe, helping to maintain order in the British Empire. In the First World War, one battalion served the duration in France and endured unbelievable losses and privations. Others were in India at the start of the 1914-1918 conflict and moved on to Salonika or trained new recruits in England.

When the then often despised regulars were back from abroad, before the First World War, the common soldiers would infiltrate the town from Bowerham Barracks, all looking for booze, most for women and a few for trouble.

Troublemakers were usually handed over to the military for punishment and seldom appeared in the local court. There were pubs in nearly every street for quenching their thirsts and part time whores ready to satisfy their other needs. If they did not find what they wanted in the pubs, it was well-known they'd find what they needed in China Lane, Bridge Street or one or two other streets -- slums where prostitutes lived.

Tattered flags and various other memorials to the regiment dominated the interior of Lancaster Priory Church.

When Michael visited the place with his father, one of the things they did was look at the book which listed the names of those who'd died in the First World War. The book was in a glass case. Gordon was looking for Eli Watson's name. Somebody turned the book to a fresh page every day. Gordon had been there before but he was always disappointed because it was never at the right page with Eli's name on it.

"Come and sit down over here," Gordon whispered to Michael.

"All right Dad," Michael whispered back and he tiptoed quietly behind his father and sat down under all the flags, some going back as far as 1680.

His father knelt and started to pray. When he sat down again, he took his hanky out of his pocket and wiped his eyes. Michael had never seen his Dad cry before.

"What's wrong, Dad?" he whispered.
"Nothing son! It's nothing. I was just casting my mind back."

He put his arm round Michael's shoulders and gave him a hug. Then they sat there quietly for a few minutes.

A woman in a black hat and black coat came in. They stood up to go. The woman recognised Gordon,

"Hello Gordon," she murmured. "Been paying your respects? Aye, there'll be a few of us here for that today."

Many pals had all been killed on the same day as Gordon's Dad. Many people in Lancaster still had that date engraved on their hearts.

Gordon was just 11 years old when Eli was killed. Michael thought it strange that his Dad rarely spoke about him but he must have loved him and remembered him. He was sure that's why he had been crying.

Eli had been a regular soldier who had joined up, underage, in an East Lancashire Regiment, at Fulwood Barracks, Preston in 1887. He'd run away from his London home and enlisted using a false name. He met Nan and married her in Preston. The Boer War was over and he found peacetime sodiering boring. He decided to go absent without leave. After he deserted his regiment, he became a family man and moved to the anonymity of Lancaster using his real name.. When the First World War started, his patriotic feelings emerged and drove him to re-enlist, this time in the Lancaster Kings Own, using his proper name.

There was a recruiting drive in Lancaster and a big parade, led by a brass band, playing brain-turning music. Sheep led by donkeys they went lambs to the slaughter. He was killed at the Second Battle of Ypres on the 5th May, 1915. Many of his comrades died there too. He was commemorated on the Menin Gate, Ypres, as well as on the Lancaster War Memorial.

Michael wasn't born until long after his death but he knew what he looked like. During his childhood, there was always a photograph of Eli displayed prominently in the house. It was enlarged from a smaller black and white photograph and someone had tried to colour it but it didn't look right. The enlargement hadn't worked either because the face, in profile, was blurred.

However, Michael could see that it was the same face as the one in the photograph at his Nan's. This was also in an oval frame but bigger. It showed a fierce-looking man in soldier's uniform. He was seated and leaning forward on a walking stick. His peaked cap was worn straight on his head. He had a sergeant's stripes. He had a black, drooping moustache and looked extremely stern.

This photo was very lifelike. When Michael was at his Nan's, in the room alone with the image, he felt uneasy. The photo was hung high on the wall above the mantelpiece. Eli had piercing eyes and it didn't matter where you were in the room. When you looked at the photograph, the eyes were staring straight at you.

Michael felt Eli was a bit like God, who he was learning about at Sunday School. He'd been told God was watching him. No matter what he did, no matter where he was, God would see him. If he did anything wrong, he was told, one day God would punish him.

After Nan married again, the photograph stayed where it was. Every day, for the rest of his life, Michael's new granddad, Henry, would see his old friend, Eli, staring down at him disapprovingly, judging his every word and movement.

Grandad Henry Tomlinson was very fond of Michael. He would take him for a walk, whenever he had the opportunity, and weather permitting. At other times, he would sit him on his knee and tell him stories. He was a good-story-teller and Michael liked it when he imitated the voices of strange people or animals in his tales.

A shy man in adult company, tall, grey-haired, balding Henry was completely at ease when he had Michael to himself. He wore his best three piece suit when he came for Michael. His brown shoes were polished. Michael was fascinated by the gold watch which he kept in his waistcoat pocket and the gold-linked chain from which it hung. Henry would fiddle the watch out of his pocket and put it next to Michael's ear.

"Can you hear it ticking lad?"

Best of all, Michael liked Grandad to tell him about his adventures in the war and how his friend, Eli, had saved his life, when he was wounded in France. Eli had crawled out into no-man's-land, under fire from the nearby German trenches, and dragged him to safety behind their own lines. Now, Henry was married to Eli's widow and looking after her.

Grandad Henry was a kind, gentle, nervous man, who still suffered from shell-shock. His facial muscles sometimes twitched uncontrollably and his hands would shake. He also had a bad cough because his lungs were permanently affected by gas he had breathed in during the war. His cough wasn't helped by the work he did at Standfast's, a factory on Caton Road, beyond Skerton Bridge, where he breathed in lots of fumes, which were to contribute to his early death in 1938.

Nan had taken quite a lot of persuading but after his war, he came back to wed her. He courted his dead friend, Eli's, widow for a long time. Nan had only married him eventually, on the clear understanding that he would be moving into her house and she would be in charge there. Under no circumstances was he to discipline or even express an opinion about her boys and how she brought them up. This turned out to be no problem because he was nothing but a benevolent presence in the household.

It seemed to be a quite successful marriage. Henry had always lived in Lancaster, apart from four years in the King's Own, during the war. He wasn't all that bright but made the most of his limited opportunities. He'd always held a job, sometimes an unpleasant one of the kind that people don't always appreciate enough. Gordon was fond of his step-father and told Brian Howson, "It's the Henrys of this world that make the world go round."

For a time he'd worked on midden carts, collected night soil buckets from the houses not on mains sewerage and emptied dustbins round town. He was not very talkative but his mates always liked him. He lived at home with an invalid mother, until she died. He always supported and cared for her. After a hard day's work, he had to do most of the housework. He paid a neighbour to do the shopping.
After his mother died, he changed his job. Three evenings a week, just for a couple of hours, he met some of his work-mates from Standfast's in the Carpenters Arms. They had a couple of pints of mild-and-bitter and a game of cards or dominoes. He was quite good at dominoes but found it hard to concentrate and remember which cards had gone if they played anything more complicated than Pontoon.

None of the lads victimised him or tried to take advantage of his simple, uncomplicated ways. Often, they would tell him their troubles, knowing he wouldn't blab, knowing his was a sympathetic ear.
Sometimes when Michael sat on his granddad's knee, he would try and take his signet ring off.

"That'll never come off lad, not until I'm pushing up the daisies," his Grandad used to say. "You never can tell, it might be yours one day." No matter how hard Michael tried, he'd never been able to get that ring off his Grandad's finger, although he tried as hard as he could on numerous occasions.

It was true what Henry said. The ring stayed on his finger until the day that he died. Gordon wore it after that and when Gordon died in 1983, just as Henry had hinted, it passed to Michael.