JOSEPH Chamberlain couldn’t be sure that his wartime message to his wife would reach its destination.

The fact that it did arrive at the correct address was due to an unknown Good Samaritan and the goodwill of the GPO, the General Post Office.

Joseph threw the postcard out of a train window, hoping that a passerby would pick it up and post it.

The postcard, with no stamp but with BEF (British Expeditionary Force) written on it and franked Weymouth May 31, 1940, was duly delivered to his wife Lilian at their home in Boswell Road, Cowley.

Oxford Mail:

  • The postcard

It read: “My dear darling wife; just a card, this is the second in 5 minutes, to let you know I am in England safe and sound. I am now on the train and will let you know where I am soon.

“The train is now moving. Your ever loving husband Joe.”

Mr Chamberlain joined the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in 1924 and served in Germany, France and India. When he was demobbed in 1946, he was an acting regimental sergeant major.

Oxford Mail:

  • An Army boxing picture – Joseph Chamberlain is standing on the extreme left

He and his wife married at Oxford register office while he was on leave in 1930. Mrs Chamberlain always regretted not having a church wedding, so on their diamond wedding anniversary in 1990, their family secretly arranged a ceremony at St James Church, Cowley.

The church was packed with family and friends – even their 14-year-old dachshund Harry sported a red carnation.

The couple’s daughter and son-in-law, Jo and Bill Boulton, of Kenville Road, Kennington, wrote in after seeing the photograph, reproduced below, of Dunkirk veterans at their first annual dinner in Oxford in 1962 (Memory Lane, March 10).

Mr Chamberlain is the man enjoying his soup on the extreme right of the picture. The woman sitting opposite him (you can just see her hair) is almost certainly Mrs Chamberlain.

Oxford Mail:

  • Some of the Dunkirk veterans at their first annual dinner in Oxford in 1962 – Joseph Chamberlain is on the extreme right and his wife Lilian is thought to be opposite him, with only her hair showing

As we recalled, it was the first annual dinner of the Oxford branch of the Dunkirk Veterans’ Association.

It was held at the Territorial Army Centre in Marston Road to remember the Allied troops’ escape from France at the height of the Second World War.

During the evening, the mayor of Oxford, Alderman Lionel Harrison, handed over the new branch standard to the association. It had three colours, representing the three fighting services.

Among those present was the branch’s honorary chaplain, the Rev James Cocke, of Highfield, Headington, who, as the Oxford Mail has reported, is still in charge of the parish and is now the Church of England’s longest serving clergyman.

 

 

 

 

  • Memory Lane this week