doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Peering into the past

I'm going through boxes of photos from my late father's effects.

Peering into the boxes is looking back in time. The photos go back about as far as photography, old studio shots of my great, great grandfather, Col. Sir C.J Oswald FitzGerald KCB and Lady Alice FitzGerald, right up to my father with me as a baby and into childhood.

However, the most interesting ones are from the period covering my grandfather's early life and then his service in the Ghurkas on the North West Frontier, up to their repatriation to the UK after WW2 and the childhood photos of my father and his parents at Dudmaston Hall in Quatt in the 1950s and '60s.

The India photos are a lost world, rows of smart Ghurkas, with their British officers, snap shots on active service and training in the foothills, cricket matches in Suez en-route to Southampton, my grandfather on a camel with the Sphynx behind him in Egypt in the days before mass tourism.

The shots of my grandmother with the Ghurka wives, the shooting parties and the black-tie mess dinners and other social event, all fur coats, dress uniforms and clipped moustaches.

The past is indeed another country and how far away it seems with the passing of each generation.

Hello Dig,

Sounds fascinating. Do share some!

JC

I would agree with JC. Please post a fewer

I'll see what I can do when I get back to London.

Sounds interesting. I look forward to your next post.

Those Gurkhas are really something; I covered them in the India-Pakistan war early 70s. Fearless in real sense, like kids. I'd be interested to know percentage PTSD compared to ours.

When I served there were times when I felt I could be back in Quenn Victoria's army. Regimental mess nights, seated around the vast Chillianwallah Table that a previous regiment (the 9th of Foot) had 'inherited' from the Sikh's in 1849; Sultan Tipo Sahib's silver powder flask liberated from the Palace of Seringapatam in 1799 by Lieutenant William Hartley of the 12th; the array of regimental silver donated by previous generations and my brother officers, all of us resplendent in our red coated mess kit, the elder ones with long rows of war medals upon their chests. We could equally have been in 1874 rather than 1974.

At one time I managed to find a marvellous game book which had been presented to the mess in around 1920. It was a very large, leather enshrined tome and somewhere I made a record of the wondrous list of game that crossed the head of both pages, from elephant, tiger, buffalo, through sand grouse, peafowl, chukor partridge to the more prosaic pheasant, mallard, woodcock of my own experience. There were fabulous stories therein - Captain Freeland shot the beast before breakfast.... - and we enjoyed reading them and attempting to recall the adventures those chaps must have had. The book had not been used for some two decades so I restarted recording my own days shooting and others did too. I hope it's still in use.

Tim

Looking at my grandfather's regiment, the 5th Gurkha Rifles, they had three serving V.C holders under him, when he was Major. I have photos of them all.

I also have the presentation Kukri knives given to him when his regiment was disbanded when India left the Empire.

Does Dave needs to add a "Nostalgic Journeys" section?

OWD

The first thing that prompted me to post were the old shooting parties and the photos of my grandfather and father as boys with old guns and fishing rods. Then I just started digging deeper.

Who knows what it 'OK' to discuss - my thread on a Purdey 20-bore ended us as a discussion about Lucas electrics on pre '80s British motor vehicles!

True. Sorry for being snarky.

The animals are hungry and we need new gun stuff to argue about....


OWD

IMO what is interesting from Dig�s recount is providing us with a broader picture of the social & political environment that made possible the ascendancy of the sporting shotgun & rifle. Those were exceptional times where rather few men and women had the means and will to do great feats. Sometimes we forget why and how came into being the sporting guns (old and new) that we admire so much today.

Thanks Dig.

EJSXS

Hi Dig, thanks so much for the great stories!!! You come from a line of distingushed personages. My hats off to your family!!

Thanks again!

Greg

Dig, looking forward to the pictures, including the presentation Kukri knives.

JC

ej, such a beautiful, eloquent comment on the content of this thread. Well done!

As an aside, I'm certain OWD had no intention of his post being mean-spirited. Just a harmless joke misinterpreted through the magic of the email.

ej - yes.

I should, in a similar vein, perhaps one day get some photos and other info about my part of the world for that same socio-economic context. Between the wealth of gold and wool, and the abundance of small game, the old bluestone station homesteads' gunrooms here held some astonishing guns in surprising quantities.

Second KK's and Cadet's opinion on EJ's post. Well put!

JC