FINDING GENEALOGY GOLD #1

Part 1 – Two Miniature Black and White Photos

In 2023 Rex Blanchette and I embarked on our first Holiday to Europe since the arrival of Covid to our shores and the appearance of Cancer in my life. And our aim? To achieve the following goals:-

1. Return to Rome to see a few places we missed in 2019
2. Visit our friends Wuz and Lyn in Sarnano
3. Take part in the 80^th Anniversary of the Italian Armistice in Servigliano
4. Visit Florence for the first time
5. Return to Paris to tick off a few more sights
6. Tour some of the Battlefields of the Western Front in search of Family
7. Visit Le Quesnoy and view the new NZ Museum – Te Arawhata
8. Visit Caen and Etretat to follow up some research on Maimie and Grandpa Harry
9. Visit Coutances to see where Rex’s French family originated from
10. Visit Mont St. Michel and Cancale
11. Return to Jersey to catch up with family and friends
12. Visit family and friends in England
13. Undertake a 2 week narrowboat cruise on the Langollen and Shropshire Union canals

Sadly we had to forego Goal Number 8 as we lost a day in France when we incurred a flat tyre at Quarry Cemetery just after finding the grave of LEWIS JARDINE.

But you’d think that all of that would have been enough! Yet there were three separate additions to our holiday that were to become Genealogy Gold for me.

The first was when I was given a pile of old family photos to wade through by my brother Graham when we stayed with him and his wife Pat in Shoreham. Now I’m pretty sure that I had previously rummaged through all these old photos on at least two other occasions. Once in 2017 and again in 2019.

So I was quite surprised when my eye caught a glimpse of two very miniature black and white photos that were of quite poor quality and needed closer inspection because there was something about them that reminded me of some pictures I had recently seen in a museum that was being created in Servigliano in Italy in honour of Italian families that had assisted POW’s that had been released into the Italian countryside after the Italian Armistice in September 1943.

The 2 pictures depicted a group of men who all appeared to be enjoying a nice day out in the countryside, and one of the men (at bottom right) appeared to look like my Dad. But who were these men and where were the photos taken? Fortunately, on the reverse of one of the photos was some writing which appeared to answer the first question, and I have attempted to decipher the handwriting which appears to be written by six different people and, dare I say it, not by an educated hand? Certainly not my Dad’s handwriting.

WILLIS – 2^nd Lt. A.G.R. Willis (E.C. 1357) 11^th Sikh Reg.

GOLDINEHAM – Lt. M.J.D. Goldingham (E.C. 3512) 18 Cav.

BELANTYING – Lt. J.A. Ballantyne (229558) R.A.C.

LEWIS HEATH – Lt. F.R. Lewis-Heath (162524) Hamp.

HOUGHTON – Capt. H. Houghton (141472) R.A.M.C.

Don Nino?

Now the first 5 people all tie up with personnel who I have already identified in the Roll Call section of my Blog and I have to assume therefore that all these men were likely to be somewhere in the Italian countryside, and is it too much to assume that this was sometime after they had all been released from PG 49 at Fontanellato? But what exactly is the name at the bottom? And I have to confess that at the time of reading this information for the first time, I had no idea what that last name was and how it was connected with these five men.