Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

The Wisbech Advertiser was first published in August 1845, and continued in one form or another until 1975. It is now the Fenland Citizen. In 1914 the editor was  F.J. Gardiner, and the family had a general printing business based in Union Street. Frederick and his wife Amelia had two sons. The elder was Grahame, who was already involved in the family business, and Ernest Frederick, known as Eric. 

Eric originally attended Barton School, but was sent away to the rather more prestigious Mill Hill school in London. From there, he had qualified as an accountant. The family was home was 'Trevordale', which still stands at the end of Alexandra Road.

Courtesy of Frederick Gardiner having 'a quiet word' with influential friends, Eric was able to secure a position in one of the elite regiments of the British Army - The Honourable Artillery Company. This was the country's oldest Territorial regiment, and dated back to the time of Henry VIII. It was very much a gentleman's regiment.

The first units of the HAC were sent to France in December 1914. Eric missed this first draft, and was able to spend Christmas in Wisbech, but when he returned to barracks in January 1915, he found that his company was preparing to cross the channel in mid January.

Very much against military regulations, Eric kept a diary. It was beautifully written, both in the sense of the flowing, beautifully legible handwriting, and the apt and careful use of English. The diary is tiny - smaller than an audio cassette. It begins:

This diary belongs to
Private E.F. Gardiner
H.A.C.

Relates his experiences in The Great European War
1914/15

Commencing at arrival at Base Camp at Rouen 25/1/15

Eric's unit traveled by train from Rouen to Bailleul, in Flanders. Bailleul was an important railhead, air depot and hospital centre.

Eric's diary entry for 30/1/15 says:
"On arrival at Bailleul heard for the first time heavy gunfire. Many aeroplanes knocking about. It is reported 1 enemy aeroplane brought down. While walking sound of nine bombs dropped heard. Sounded pretty close, and caused everyone to start and look up."

It should be pointed out that the HAC were not, in fact, an artillery regiment - they were infantry, and their name stems from their earliest days when the word 'artillery was given to any kind of mechanical weapon, such as a musket or a crossbow.
By early February, Gardiner's relatively peaceful baptism into soldiering was over. His company had been moved up into trenches near Kemmel and Locre. 

On 14/2/15, he writes:
"All this time, our guns, against their usual custom) had continued firing at night, and both sides were blazing away, lighting up the country all around. We started out feeling here was something doing…and we halted while the German star shells in numbers lit up the sky around us. The order came sharply. "Lie flat down!" and we all went down like one man. I went down on my stomach in mud which covered our boots over the tops…We then proceeded to relieve our fellows in K1 (trench) having negotiated several awkward places where shells and streams had made the ground knee deep in mud and water."

TO BE CONTINUED

NOW THAT WISBECH HAS BEEN SAVED, AND ALL OUR PROBLEMS HAVE BEEN CONSIGNED TO THE  BIN, Pickwick can return to being his positive and benign self. In this blissful mood, he would like to say how much he enjoys his visits to the town library. In terms of stock, certainly in the fiction section, it is a long way behind Big Sister in March, but P does not want anyone to think that he is complaining about March getting all the attention, because we have been told how wrong that is. Anyway, the ladies in Wisbech library are much more pleasant and helpful, and the library benefits from not having a skate park just outside its door. So, a big 'thank you' to everyone - another big plus for the town, P believes. 

There is one small blemish on the horizon. A mole on the local planning and licensing committee has brought me disturbing news. The library is certainly one of the few premises in the town centre not to have a license to sell booze or lend money, and the brave entrepreneurs who sit in power over us are looking to put that right, as they think the library had become far too elitist anyway, with all those books and things. So here is a sneak preview of the revamped library as it will appear later in the spring.

 PICKWICK WAS OUT AND ABOUT on his trusty charger this afternoon, taking photos of various places and things to do with Wisbech and The Great War. Knowing that there used to be a memorial plaque in the police station, he summoned up courage and knocked on the door to see if he could take a photo of it. A really pleasant officer took him upstairs to where the plaque now hangs in the rest-room.

 WHILE WALKING ALONG TO THE REST ROOM, Pickwick had a heart-stopping moment as he passed an open office door, for who should be sitting at his desk, deep in thought was none other than Inspector Sissons! Now, P had been slightly critical of the Inspector's recent utterances on this blog, and had also written a tetchy letter to the Wisbech Standard on the matter. What if, at that very moment, the Inspector was reading the paper and plotting a savage revenge involving dawn raids on Pickwick Towers, orange suits and extradition to a Guatamalan prison hell-hole?

RESISTING THE TEMPTATION TO CHAT with the affable officer who had shown him the plaque, P made an excuse and left, thanking his maker that his bike was still safely chained to the police station railings. 

WHAT A SILLY OLD BUFFER HE PROVED TO BE, for when he got home and examined the newspaper with trembling fingers, what should he find on the letters page, but ................NOTHING INCRIMINATING! Obviously anticipating problems, the editor had instantly, and very wisely, put the letter straight in the bin!

ON A MORE SERIOUS NOTE, Pickwick will relate, tomorrow, the sad story of the son of a newspaper editor (no, not that one) who had strings pulled to fast-track him into a good regiment at the start of The Great War, and how the story was to end in heartbreak.

PICKWICK RECOGNISES THAT HIS MEMORY IS NOT WHAT IT WAS. But how could he forget about a whole case of premier French bubbly, brought back from the gite last August? The old duffer was searching in his cluttered music room for something else altogether, and found a sealed box of wonderful fizz from:

TRUST ME,  although it is not one of the 'big names' drunk by overpaid reality TV 'stars', or sprayed about by chav-capped F1 victors, it is the Drink Of The Gods. Ariston Fils are a small volume/high quality vinyard who sell almost entirely to the (more discerning) French market. A pretentious snob...? MOI...?

AND NOW FOR SOME MUSIC and a video that, had he watched it, would have had Spielberg beating his way to Pickwick's door for hints and technical advice. In answer to the obvious question, "This blog is meant to be about the Wisbech Community and how we can solve our issues - WHY ARE YOU POSTING A MUSIC VIDEO?" - Because I can, because I can! ENJOY OR IGNORE!

PICKWICK HAS BEEN TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT by the Big Beasts crashing through the Wisbech undergrowth in the last couple of days. The Movers and Shakers have been and gone, leaving their admirers breathless in their wake. Flesh has been pressed, wine glasses have been clinked together on decisions which will shape our future, heads have been nodded gravely, protesters have been cast into the netherworld by howls of scorn, and the world, well at least those in PE 13, waits with bated breath for the full story of How Wisbech Was Saved In Just 24 Hours.

PICKWICK'S IRREVERENT FRIEND, who goes by the name of WOD, has secured international finance, in the way of Five Trillion Nigerian Nairas, for a controversial redevelopment of the Market Place. As soon as the fairground rides have gone, the footings will be dug for a luxury Oasis-style lido-pool and dryside complex. This artist's impression does scant justice to a development which will, undoubtedly, bring Wisbech well into the modern age.

TAKING THE **** IS EASY.  At least it is, if one is lucky enough to live in Wisbech. There are so many easy targets, open goals, fish in barrels - choose your own metaphor. But Pickwick would like to adopt a more serious tone, and take his readers (small in number but high in quality) to Wisbech over 90 years ago. When Pickwick was younger, he wrote a book about three Wisbech men who went off to fight in what was called, optimistically, The War To End All Wars. Here is a very brief story about a Wisbech man who went off to war and never returned.

JAMES COLE was in his forties when the war broke out in 1914. He was married, with young children, and had a steady job with Elgoods. He was old enough to escape the Conscription Act which was brought in to boost manpower after the depredations of 1914 and 1915, but he chose to join up.

WISBECH MEN could choose to fight with many different units, but the two regiments which had a natural claim on the town were the Cambridgeshire Regiment, and The Suffolk Regiment. The Cambs were a Territorial unit - they were not regular full-time soldiers, but most of their strength had signed to say that they would fight abroad if 'the call' came. The Suffolks were a Regular Army Unit, but their volunteer battalion, the 11th Suffolks, recruited in Wisbech. James Cole signed up to fight with the 11th Suffolks.

KITCHENER'S ARMY  was the name given to the huge volunteer army raised as a result of recruiting campaigns  typified by the legendary poster with Kitchener's finger pointing out at passers-by. The great test of Kitchener's Army was to be what we now call The Battle Of The Somme.

IN THE EARLY DAWN  of July 1st 1916, the 11th Suffolks, including James Cole, were poised to attack the German lines just south of Ovillers, a tiny village, east of Albert in northern France. To the east of the untried British troops, on the crest of a gentle ridge were the German Lines. Beneath the German positions was a huge mine - a subterranean cavity packed with thousands of tons of high explosive. The theory was that this mine would detonate, blow the German defenders into oblivion, and this allow the attackers to stroll their way to victory. In reality, there was a gap between the mine detonating and the attack being launched - this time lag allowed surviving defenders to emerge from their deep defensive dugouts and pour withering fire down on the British forces.

THIS SECTOR OF WHAT HAS BEEN DESCRIBED AS THE WORST DAY IN BRITISH MILITARY HISTORY saw carnage almost unimaginable in wars since then. The 11th Suffolks were cut to pieces. James Cole's body was eventually recovered, and buried behind the lines in Becourt Military cemetery. Until the early 1920s, his grave was marked with a simple wooden cross.

MUCH LATER, this cross was replaced with a familiar marble headstone, provided by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

FOR JAMES' WIDOW, SUSANNA, there must have been years of hardship, grief and struggle. She was not alone. Over 700,000 British servicemen and women were killed in The Great War. Susanna and her children survived with little help from the state, apart from a widely-derided commemorative plaque, known as a 'Death Penny'

ALL SHE HAD TO REMIND HER OF JAMES, was his personal effects, eventually returned to her by The War Office.

SUSANNA SURVIVED into what we might call 'modern times'. She raised her children in her little house in Whitby Street. It has long since been wiped off the map by our supreme masters, the town planners.

HER GRANDCHILDREN were brought up to respect the sacrifice of their Grandfather, and when Susanna died, they visited James' grave, and brought back a handful of French earth, which they buried with her ashes in Wisbech cemetery.

PICKWICK KNOWS HE IS THE PRODUCT OF THE LAST CENTURY. However, the last time he looked, he still had some of the marbles which made him a force to be reckoned with the length and breadth of the East Midlands. So, he was still digesting Inspector Robin Sissons' claim that there were no statistics available about migrant crime in Wisbech (in answer to a FOI request from Ellee Seymour) when what should he see .....?

INSPECTOR SISSONS appeared in a very telegenic clip on Anglia TV News saying, in effect, that statistics prove that migrant crime in Wisbech is "small and static"

ERRMMM, LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT.. There are no statistics for migrant crime. There ARE statistics for migrant crime, but we are not going to tell you what they are. The statistics bear out what I am saying. The statistics DO NOT bear out what I am saying.

IT'S NO GOOD, the political nuances of this are all too much for my aged brain. I am still partially deafened from all the resounding back-slapping noises which have been echoing around PE13 all day. It's time I went to bed.

IN WHICH PICKWICK ENTERS THE ALICE-IN-WONDERLAND WORLD OF CRIME STATISTICS and reaches no firm conclusion. Blogger Ellee Seymour made the news recently when her request to Cambs Police, using a Freedom Of Information request, to provide details of how much local crime was migrant related, was turned down. There is a get-out clause, apparently, which says that if the request is going to take too many hours to complete, then it needn't be fulfilled. It is rather odd that the assessment of how long a request would take appears to be a purely subjective one by, in this case, Cambs Police.

Shortly after Ellee Seymour made it known that she had been blanked by Cambs Police, Inspector Robin Sissons, who is in charge of the Fenland sector, had his own moment of fame by appearing in the paper saying how hurt he and his fellow bobbies were at any assertion that they weren't doing their jobs properly, and he was certain that citizens would not want his staff hunched over a computer all day when they should be out catching criminals.

Pickwick unearthed another instance of Cambs Police blanking a FOI request, when they adopted much the same approach to a request for information on translation services. Their reply to the request contained the wonderful paragraph,

"For the purposes of subsection (1), information which is held by a public authority and does not fall within subsection (2) (b) is not regarded as reasonably accessible to the applicant merely because the information is available from the public authority itself on request, unless the information is made available in accordance with the authority's publication scheme and any payment required is specified in, or determined in accordance with, the scheme."

ALL CLEAR, THEN…? Excellent, I'm glad we could help.

In 2011, someone had the temerity to ask Cambs Police if they could provide information about motoring offences committed by foreign drivers. Ever eager to help, this was the reply...

STILL, THERE ARE ALWAYS THE POLICE CRIME MAPS to keep us informed. These can be accessed here:
http://www.police.uk/crime/?q=Wisbech,%20Cambridgeshire,%20UK#crimetypes/2011-12

Here a few screenshots of the Wisbech data for January 2012. Firstly, two maps showing where most of the VIOLENT CRIME happened.

 

 

THEFT .....

ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, Pickwick does not believe in The Baltic Mafia, nor in the 'Streets Of Fear' scenario. Being a large and grumpy-looking male who rarely ventures out after curfew, he does not feel threatened. It was plain to anyone who could read the court reports from the late and much lamented Wisbech Magistrates, that Eastern Europeans were over-represented in cases of drink driving, licensing and insurance defaults. That did not, and does not make Wisbech into a town threatened by sinister Baltic Crime Lords and their shaven-headed hit men. Why, oh why Cambs Police are doing such a brilliant job of making it appear that they have something to hide, I cannot imagine. A little transparency might go a long, long way ......

FOR ANYONE WHO WAS UNABLE TO ACCESS THE COMMENTS FOR EACH SURVEY QUESTION, this should work better.

QUESTION 1


QUESTION 2


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QUESTION 6