Saturday 25 December 2010

For All the Lost and the Found

Found on the letters page of The Fishing Gazette cover date July 14th 1917 a letter from a Mr. Alex Osbourne of Margate:

Dear Sirs

It might interest you to know that your Fishing Gazette Pocket Calendar of 1916 has saved the life of my son-in-law.   I gave it to him a year last January as a Christmas Present.  On the 3rd of this month he got rather badly mauled in action at the battle of Arras - one eye blown out, a big wound in the thigh and the arm, a piece of shell passed through the calendar and just reached his flesh immediately in front of the heart.  Had it not been for the protection afforded he must have been killed.  What a service a little thing like that can be EVEN IN THE THICK OF THE BATTLE.