~ Chapter Twenty-Two ~
A Brief Childhood
Walter Charles Frederick Holmes, Charlie Gisby’s fourth son and his first by Elizabeth Holmes, was born in Margate on the first day of August 1907. Although there was no dispute that he was the son of Charlie Gisby, his birth certificate shows his father as Robert Holmes, to whom Elizabeth was still married at the time. It is believed that Robert was recorded as the father to avoid Walter being registered as illegitimate.
Walter’s birthplace was in Ventnor Lane, a narrow side-street off Princes Crescent, where his parents would live when they eventually married, and round the corner from Addington Street, where he would be brought up in the new Gisby household. Among the members of that household, he was known as Charlie, rather than Walter, from the beginning, a name that in later years he himself would much prefer to be called.
In the year of young Charlie’s birth, King Edward VII was nearing the end of his brief reign as monarch of the United Kingdom. The Liberal Leader, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, had reached the midpoint of his even briefer term as the country’s Prime Minister. And talks between the military leaders of Britain and France culminated in an agreement in principle to send 100,000 British soldiers to France within two weeks of a Franco-German war, the agreement marking the origin of the British Expeditionary Force that would be sent to France in 1914 at the start of the Great War with Germany.
Walter’s birthplace was in Ventnor Lane, a narrow side-street off Princes Crescent, where his parents would live when they eventually married, and round the corner from Addington Street, where he would be brought up in the new Gisby household. Among the members of that household, he was known as Charlie, rather than Walter, from the beginning, a name that in later years he himself would much prefer to be called.
In the year of young Charlie’s birth, King Edward VII was nearing the end of his brief reign as monarch of the United Kingdom. The Liberal Leader, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, had reached the midpoint of his even briefer term as the country’s Prime Minister. And talks between the military leaders of Britain and France culminated in an agreement in principle to send 100,000 British soldiers to France within two weeks of a Franco-German war, the agreement marking the origin of the British Expeditionary Force that would be sent to France in 1914 at the start of the Great War with Germany.
|
There’s little doubt that the events of the Great War would have dominated Charlie’s schooldays. He would have watched as his three half-brothers left home: George and Steve to enlist in The Buffs and then Tom to join the Royal Navy. He would have observed his father going about his War duties on the home front. He would have listened to stories of the horrendous battles with the Huns that raged in France and Belgium. And he would have been both enthralled and frightened during the frequent German attacks on Margate from the air and sea. But, dressed in his Sunday best, he seems happy enough in this photograph of him, taken at a family gathering around 1915.
|
 |
Within five years of that occasion, the Great War had long ended. Charlie’s all-too-brief childhood had also come to an end. By that time, he had embarked on a life of hard work and dedication that was set to last more than half a century.