My Account
The Warehouse’s move from Snells Beach to Warkworth delivered an unexpected and touching story that may never have been uncovered had the Snells store not closed. Warkworth resident Stephen Becket takes up the story …
In February, a friend was looking at the local Facebook page and suddenly exclaimed, “Isn’t that your Mum and Dad?”
She was looking at a photo that someone had put up enquiring who these two people were and did anyone recognise them? I did.
It was a photo I remember seeing many years ago, as a boy, of my mother and father taken during World War II. My father, who was a lieutenant in the Corps of Royal Engineers, was in uniform and my mother was in civilian dress. She was wearing a brooch that she later gave to me after my father died.
My father’s rank and uniform suggest that the photo was taken in 1944 just before he was sent to India, after surviving D-Day and the invasion of Western Europe. He was sent to India in preparation for the invasion of Malaya, which never eventuated because the war ended owing to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan and Japan’s subsequent surrender. He returned from Malaya a Captain.
The other clue was that my mother was in civilian dress. During the war, she was a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, after being bombed out of her home by the Germans. She was the first person demobbed from the WRNS because her husband was going to India so that would have been why she wasn’t in uniform. All her other war-time photos had her in uniform.
A lady who worked at the Snell’s Beach Warehouse Store, Jenny Walsh, found the photo in the company safe when she clearing the office prior to the move to Warkworth.
Instead of just throwing it into the bin, she made an effort to trace the owner – which I’m truly grateful for. Apparently, the photo had been found among the photo frames back in 2018 and someone had put it in the safe in case anyone claimed it. And there it lay until February.
After much toing and froing, I managed to contact Jenny and showed her the brooch my mother had been wearing, and she very kindly gave me the photo.
The Warkworth Photo Store did a marvellous job of tidying it up, as it was fairly scrunched up, and they reworked the old photo and we had it framed. This I then sent to my mother in the UK as a present for her 100th birthday in April. She really appreciated receiving the photo and has it displayed at her home – despite her age, she lives independently and needs no medication or assistance.
Where the photo came from and how it ended up in the Snells Beach Warehouse, we have no idea. I do have other family here but no one claims to know anything about it. One of life’s little mysteries!
So, thank you, Warehouse, and a big thank you to Jenny who could have just as easily consigned the photo to the bin. You made one very old lady very happy.
