memories of T.V.Brewer

Tom Brewer was my grandfather, affectionately known to all as ‘the old man’. I remember him as a rather plump short man with a paintbrush moustache. He was very much the centre of our extended family He always took  the head of the dinner table, eating noisily, white cloth serviette tucked down his neck. He had a nervous energy and an optimism that was in contrast to my grandmother who was a bit of a worrier.

Tom always had some scheme or hobby on the go, enthusiastically pursued. He was a keen if not completely accomplished watercolourist.  He was also a collector of antiques and bric a brac and continued to buy and sell items into his retirement.

During the 60s we lived  a short train ride away from his house in Kew, so would visit regularly at weekends. When we arrived he could be found on the street tinkering with his car. I first remember a Hillman Minx estate that started with a crank (used when working as a furniture salesman). Later he had a blue grey Morris 1000 with lollipop indicators. I was very familiar with that car (reg no 486 WMM) as our family would borrow it when we went on holiday to see my other grandparents.

At family get togethers he invariably had a story or anecdote to tell, often with a full range of regional accents (his own had a hint of West Country).  He was a fan of Charles Dickens novels and could quote big chunks, usually settling on the eccentric and bizarre.  Actually he rather fancied himself as Mr. Pickwick but when Dads Army was first seen on TV, we all instantly recognised Captain Mainwaring as 'the old man' but without Toms' sense of fun.  

One Christmas at a family party when I was quite young he set out to read the whole family ‘A Christmas Carol’.

I remember a family catchphrase from the story, when my father and his sisters joined in.

   'Can you sit down? asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

   I can.
   Do it, then.'
The story was too long for me and my young cousins and we soon began to get bored. Aunt Marg made an attempt to save us all by suggesting we had a break for tea, but he then insisted upon continuing afterwards.

Tom was also a keen stamp collector, a hobby I shared with him as a boy. I would respectfully spend long hours with him in the front room study, leafing through his stamp collection and telling him about my school and friendships.  One these occasions he would also tell me horrific and tragic stories of the First World War. I remember his soft rather old fashioned voice, the sound of the ticking clock and the strange wining noise that the tube trains made as they travelled through Kew station. He never glorified any aspect of the war, nor encouraged anyone to see him as a hero. 

I can only remember one story he told.

At one point it had been necessary to carve a fresh trench through a section of the battlefield where german soldiers had been buried. At a busy junction a germans head showed through the trench wall, hair still visible.  As each soldier passed, it became their habit to rap him on the head and say ‘Good Morning Jerry’ or ‘Good Afternoon Jerry’. By the time they moved on from those trenches, the mans’ head had worn down to the shiny skull.

One afternoon he showed me the photos and postcards in this blog and many more letters he had. As the names and incidents kept coming I sensed he was wanting me to keep his memories alive in some way.  I knew the importance of what I was being entrusted with, but it was all too confusing. I wished he would just write it all down somewhere, and I told him that. There were too many names and obscure branches of our family.  To me, the Great War was 'the war before last' and therefore already in the very distant past. My generation were at the heart of massive and positive social changes that were sweeping aside the codes of his. Perhaps more than any other generation before, we were in denial of our own mortality, and the Great War represented death upon death. 

So I didn't try to write anything down, and to my knowledge Tom never did either. This blog is an attempt to put it all in some sort of order.

Although Tom generally had an upbeat energy and affability he would occasionally become grumpy and short tempered, whereupon the family knew to leave him be until the mood passed. 

These contrasting moods also appear in his postcards.  The messages are almost always positive - an attitude that probably served him well at the time and allowed him to survive it all. Like other soldiers, he also soon realised that the full horror of the trenches was too much for most people at home to hear, even if the more honest accounts had been allowed past the censors. Occasionally though a tetchy tone is in evidence in the cards, and you are offered a glimpse of the unremitting fear and misery.

Throughout his life the war was never far from his mind. He remained scathing of the politicians who had allowed it to happen and those that perpetuated it and he was very bitter at the immense loss of life, and the loss of so many of his friends and family. He would meet up regularly with fellow survivors, at the British Legion or at remembrance events. Behind closed doors they would quietly share the camaraderie of those who lived through it and understood. They would drink a few pints, smoke cigarettes or cigars and go over and over things.

The war continued to affect him profoundly. Generous and gregarious by nature, he could also become a willful and angry tyrant - but above all he was restless. For most of his working life he chose to be a travelling furniture salesman. At his insistence, his wife and family endured 40 house moves during his lifetime, sometimes more than once a year. Family life suffered. Was he trying to leave the war behind by being forever on the move?

When Toms' first wife Beatrice (known to us as Glam for some reason) died in the early 70s he surprised us all soon after by marrying Winifred, the widow of Reg Bond, a wartime friend from Bristol who is mentioned in these postcards.