A Blipfoto Story

This is Tom, who I met today for the first time, because of Blipfoto.

It began earlier this month when Meles and DaveH were in Belgium for the Dranouter Festival. While there they visited the Tyne Cot Cemetery, where Meles took this beautiful photo of a soldier's memorial. Noting that the soldier was from a local regiment I looked in the phone book to see if there was anyone of that name in it. There was and I mentioned this to Meles, who suggested I call them. I was rather shy about doing that, but Meles encouraged me.

I thought it would be a simple matter of enquiring about relationship and dictating the web address of the blip. The man I spoke to, Tom, was the nephew of the soldier and was very interested in the photo I described, but he had no experience of the internet. I found it was impossible to explain Blipfoto satisfactorily.

Meles and I discussed the problem and decided the best course would be for her to email the photos ( she had another with a wider view), and I would print them and get them to Tom. By this time Meles had also found the Commonwealth War Graves Commission certificate for young Tom. It is a fine document, containing the name and address of his parents. I printed the photos and certificate and although it was way outside my comfort zone, I took them to Tom.

Tom is a very pleasant gentleman, not at all what you might take a non-internet user to be. He told me his one modern gadget is a "push button phone," a cell phone that he uses to keep in touch with his grandchildren by text. He was named after his uncle.

The story of young Tom is sad, He was only 18, and he wanted to follow his older brother to the war. His mother was adamant that he should not go, but his father signed the consent paper. His mother was so angry that she went to live with her married daughter and never spoke to her husband again.

The brothers had four days together before Tom was sent to the Front, where he was killed ten days later.

Receiving the photos and certificate was a moving experience for Tom. He was very surprised that strangers would do that for him. To show what it meant to him he brought out a box of memorabilia of his father's wartime experience, and the bronze plaque that was given to his family to mark the death of his uncle. The prints I took him will become part of this collection