James Brookes 1895-1960

James Brookes 1895-1960

I don't remember much about my granddad - around us grandchildren he seemed quiet and reserved.  My favorite memory is that he once took me and Robert to his allotment. As small children it seemed like a huge farm, it was a double allotment with his chickens on one side and his vegetables on the other.  It had a well with a wooden cover where he got water for his plants - this seemed very exotic and dangerous! 

 I once went to a rare breeds farm at Shuborough Park Farm, and in an area for raising rare species of fowl there was a distinctive smell that immediately transported me to granddad's little allotment  hut, where he kept his tools, animal feed, and supplies.  I could see the old brown leatherette chaise lounge and the assorted boxes and sacks midst the earthy smell of chicken feed.  I didn't even know I had that memory buried deep inside me, and was amazed that the sense of smell had the power to evoke such a vivid recollection. 

Uncle Jimmy and Uncle Douglas both helped on the allotment and kept it going after granddad died, at least they kept growing vegetables.

The day my granddad died, I was home alone with mum.  There was a knock on the door, and when mum answered she was told that granddad had died suddenly at Uncle Jimmy's house.  It was before the days when everyone had a telephone, and cell phones were only seen in science fiction movies. Someone, I think my auntie Elsie, had rushed over the hill from Northwood to our house in Hanley to deliver the sad news.  Granddad had stopped in at Uncle Jimmy's where he was offered the ubiquitous "cuppa" when Jimmy returned from the kitchen granddad was already dead in his chair. I suppose it was at this time I learned a little about his life and since then his story has gradually unfolded.

Young Jim Brookes.

Born in 1895, James (Jim) was the third child of Joseph and Elizabeth Brookes.  He had two older sisters Annie and Florence, and in 1901 the family lived at 23 Rose Street, Northwood. Strangely enough my grandmother Clarke also lived in Rose Street at this time – at no. 61. She was some six years older than Jim, so they probably didn’t socialise, but perhaps he knew her younger brother John (Jack) who was just about a year older.

Joseph Brookes died in 1905 leaving a widow and three children, life must have been hard for the family.  Two years later Elizabeth remarried, one can only hope it was happy in the beginning, because it didn’t end that way.  John (Jack) Jones was a Welsh miner, perhaps working in the same pit as Jim, and on his marriage to Elizabeth he moved into the family house where two more children were added to the family. Lily was born in April 1908 and Jack was born in 1910.

 In 1908 at the age of 13, Jim left school to begin work in the nearby coal mine.  He had a Certificate of School Attendance for the purpose of employment under Section 5, Elementary Education Act, 1876 ... from Grove senior school, and a labour certificate which stated that James Brookes (aged 13) "Has been shown to the satisfaction of the local education authority for this district to be beneficially employed”. His life as a pit boy must have been hard, in this day and age 13 seems so young for a boy to be doing such dangerous and heavy manual labour .  But his wages, even the few pennies he earned every day, no doubt helped the family pay their way. No doubt the national miner’s strike of 1912 hit them hard, and neither Jim nor his step father would have had wages during the cold months of February and March. 

By 1911, the Elkin family had moved to Rose Street. Frederick and Mary Ann with their two daughters, Harriet and Lucretia lived towards the bottom of the steep street at no. 97.  The Elkins had moved a number of times, but 97 Rose Street was to be Lucretia’s home for the next 50 or more years.  She was two years younger that Jim Brookes, and they were teenage sweethearts.

Jim Brookes, soldier and hero

As the changeable summer weather of 1914 moved into a warm and sunny August, the political clouds gathering over Europe deepened.  In a few short weeks the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria  in June, and Germany’s early August declarations of War on Russia and France and its invasion of Belgium, climaxed on August 4th 1914, when Britain declared war on Germany.  Our family’s lives changed forever.

Coal miming was a reserved occupation, but there were no restrictions on miners wanting to enlist to fight for their country.  That they might have better served it by continuing to supply fuel for the nation, probably never crossed the minds of the young men who left the pits in droves.  You had to be 18 to enlist, and 19 to serve overseas.  Jim Brookes,  enlisted in the North Staffordshire regiment and just before his 20th birthday he was shipped off into the theatre of war.  He had probably hardly left Staffordshire in his life, but he now was bound for Gallipoli and a disastrous campaign. The British Army  medal rolls list Private James Brookes, regimental number 10235, entered conflict in the Balkans on June 26th, 1915.  The battle for the Gallipoli Peninsular and for the city of Constantinople was a complete disaster. In hot and disease-ridden conditions the British army made little progress,  Jim Brookes was probably part of the reinforcements that arrived at Anzac Cove in July 1915, or perhaps he landed at Sulva bay in August.  Following wave after wave of attack and counter attack the British admitted defeat and evacuated the Peninsula in January 1916 with the loss of 214,000 allied troops.  Jim survived, but what horrors must he have experienced!

With regiments all but destroyed, soldiers were reassigned and found themselves in new units. Jim became Private 37027 in the Lancashire Fusiliers.  His next assignment was even more horrific.  The Battle of the Somme has been described many times, the bloody battles as British divisions walked towards the German lines to be mowed down and slaughtered by German machine gun fire.  It seems likely Jim  was part of the renewed offensive in September of 1916, when the battle ended in in mid-November the Allies had advanced only 5 miles and there were 420,00 British casualties;  Jim was one of them.

On the 20th October 1916 the army sent a telegram to Lucretia Elkin, “I regret to inform you that a report has this day been received from the War Office to the effect that 37027 Pte. James Brookes of the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers was posted as “missing” after the engagement at France on 12-10-16”.  I cannot imagine the heartbreak of receiving such a telegram; what did “missing” mean? In this case it meant captured by the enemy and Jim’s  story was remarkable.

He was in the trenches, the dark muddy, quagmires of ditches and tunnels that housed the opposing forces. Under attack from artillery fire, a shell burst nearby and shrapnel hit him full force in the chest, caving his ribs and almost killing him.  His friend standing next to him was untouched but died of shock at the bloody sight. The trenches were overrun by the enemy and Jim was carried off by the Germans as a prisoner of war.  Critically injured, he was sure that had the British picked him up, he would have received basic care but would have died from his wounds.  The Germans had no compunction about trying out risky procedures on expendable prisoners and so paradoxically he lived because of the enemy’s experimental surgery.  When he recovered enough to be sent to work in the fields, he was set to planting crops, but he was proud to confess that he broke the stem of every plant he put into the ground, he was determined not to help the German war effort by growing food for their armies. 

For his service to the nation Pte James Brookes was awarded the1914-15 Star for service in Gallipoli, the British War medal for his overseas service in 1915-16 and the Victory medal. These are the standard service medals, and typically known by the self-effacing British troops as “Pip, Squeak, and Wilfred”.

I don’t know when his family heard that he had survived, or when he returned home and re-entered civilian life, but on August 3, 1919 James Brookes and Lucretia Elkin were married at Holy Trinity Church in Northwood. James was probably still recovering from the war, his occupation was listed as shop keeper and the witnesses were his sister Florence and Lucretia’s brother-in-law William Adams.