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358140294640The Royal Engineers Association-62230-1047750SERVICE NOT SELFPATRON: HER MAJESTY THE QUEENCITY OF SWANSEAChairman:Capt (Retd) BD Lawes MBE64 Lon Coed BranCockettSwanseaSA2 0YDPresident:Mr Tony Rowlands256 Dunvant RoadKillaySwanseaSA2 7SRSecretary:Mr A E AdamsNant-y-DderwenBrechfaCarmsSA32 7BLTel: 01792 547644Email: b.lawes1@Tel: 01792 536108E-mail: tonii@Tel: Tel: 01267 202467Email: anthonyadams186@March 2019 Newsletter How kind and considerate are the England rugby team, taking their foot off the pedal and letting Wales through!! Never mind Norwich are still going well. One game to go in the 6 Nations and still all to play for, whoever gets their hands on the trophy well done. Its possibly going to be Wales, but England are still in with a slight chance. After defeating Swansea in a very hard game Norwich are still heading the Championship, 11 games to go. Am I British? Am I English or am I European? Come on politicians get it sorted, its gone on too long. I think there will many new faces in parliament after the next General election as the people get rid of who they see as not listening to their constituents. We wait a see.Have you heard of Mary Smith? Well read on and you soon will.Attendees (February)Brian Lawes, Tony Adams, Roger Jones, Tony Rowlands, Andy Thorne, Nick Beverley, David Hopkins, David Evans, Aaron Windle, Billy Hartnoll, Bryan Criddle and Ron Horsey.ApologisesGeorge Elliott, Dick Pelzer, Peter Wade, John Micklewright, Ossie Simmons, Bob Hunter, Mansel Smith, Peter Williams and Harry Knight,Lost and Found A sunken World War II US aircraft carrier that had been lost for more than 76 years was found in the South Pacific Ocean. Its wreckage was found by Vulcan, a company founded by the late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, whose research vessel has located several WWII wrecks. The company said it wanted to locate the Hornet "because of its place in history as a capitol carrier that saw many pivotal moments in naval battles.The?USS Hornet?sank during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on October 26, 1942, killing about 140 of its 2,200 sailors and crew members. It lay on the seabed until this January, when it was discovered more than 17,000 feet (5,000 meters) below the ocean's surface. The Hornet was commissioned in October 1941, launched the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, and played a key role in the US victory in the Battle of Midway with Japan in 1942, sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers.The Hornet was commissioned in October 1941, launched the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, and played a key role in the US victory in the Battle of Midway with Japan in 1942, sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers. But the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, one year after it was commissioned, was its last fight. On the first day, it was hit by four bombs and two torpedoes in 10 minutes. Most crew members were transferred to another ship, while others tried to repair the damage.It was attacked again with a torpedo and two bombs, and the rest of the crew abandoned it. It sank the next morning. Richard Nowatzki, a gunner on the ship who survived the battle,?told CBS News?that when enemy planes left, "we were dead in the water. They used armour-piercing bombs," he said. "Now when they come down, you hear them going through the decks ... plink, plink, plink, plink ... and then when they explode the whole ship shakes."The wreck was found on the Vulcans first dive. It was aided by using data from national and naval archives. 22098001206500This isn't the Petrel's first discovery of WWII wreckage. In August 2017 it?discovered the wreck of the USS Indianapolis,?a heavy cruiser involved in the bombing of Hiroshima. There has been a major movie made of the demise of USS Indianapolis when returning from operations under radio silence was sunk by torpedoes. Many of those who survived the sinking were later taken by sharks.In July 1945, Indianapolis completed a top-secret high-speed trip to deliver parts of Little Boy, the first nuclear weapon ever used in combat, to the United States Army Air Force Base on the island of Tinian, and subsequently departed for the Philippines on training duty. At 0015 on 30 July, the ship was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, and sank in 12 minutes. 163195072898000The USS Indianapolis National Memorial was dedicated on 2 August 1995. It is located on the Canal Walk in Indianapolis. The heavy cruiser is depicted in limestone and granite and sits adjacent to the downtown canal. The crew members' names are listed on the monument, with special notations for those who lost their lives. Of 1,195 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship. The remaining 890 faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while stranded in the open ocean with few lifeboats and almost no food or water. The Navy only learned of the sinking four days later, when survivors were spotted by the crew of a PV-1 Ventura on routine patrol. Only 316 survived. The sinking of Indianapolis resulted in the greatest single loss of life at sea from a single ship, in the history of the US Navy. The captain, Captain Charles V McVay was blamed for this tragedy for not zig zagging the vessel at his court martial, only to be pardon many years down the line by President Clinton. On 17 August 2017, a search team located the wreckage of the sunken cruiser in the Philippine Sea lying at a depth of approximately 18,000?ft (5,500?m). On December 20, 2018, the crew of the Indianapolis was collectively awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.Dates for your DiaryFriday 17th - Sunday 19th May 2019REA Gibraltar Weekend Saturday 25th May 2019 Trooping the Colour Major General’s Review Tuesday 28th May 2019 Re-dedication of RE Memorial at the NMA Saturday 1st June 2019 Trooping the Colour – Colonels Review Wednesday 5th - Thursday 6th June 2019 Beating Retreat, London Thursday 6th June 2019 Founders Day Parade Royal Hospital Chelsea Saturday 8th June 2019 Queens Birthday Parade Friday 28th - Sunday 30th June 2019 REA Chilwell Weekend Friday 26th - Sunday 28th July 2019 REA Minley Weekend Friday 13th - Sunday 15th September 2019 Corps Memorial and Veterans Weekend Saturday 12th October 2019 REA AGM and Annual Dinner Sunday 13th October 2019 Sapper Sunday.Anne FrankOn this day, March 13 1945 Anne Frank diarist and Jewish victim of the Nazi Holocaust (Diary of Anne Frank), dies of typhus in Belsen concentration camp aged 15.Knocker UpperMary Smith was a Knocker-up who earned sixpence a week shooting dried peas at sleeping workers windows. A Knocker-up's job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time, a profession that started in England and Ireland during the Industrial Revolution, before alarm clocks were affordable or reliable.? 9277358890004213860889000 ?Who knocked up the Knocker Upper?Until the 1970s in some areas, many workers were woken by the sound of a tap at their bedroom window. On the street outside, walking to their next customer’s house, would be a figure wielding a long stick.The “knocker upper” was a common sight in Britain, particularly in the northern mill towns, where people worked shifts, or in London where dockers kept unusual hours,“They used to come down the street with their big, long poles,” remembers Paul Stafford, a 59-year-old artist who was raised above a shop in Oldham.?“I would sleep with my brother in the back room upstairs and my parents slept in the front.“The knocker upper wouldn’t hang around either, just three or four taps and then he’d be off. We never heard it in the back, though it used to wake my father in the front.”While the standard implement was a long fishing rod-like stick, other methods were employed, such as soft hammers, rattles and even pea shooters.But who woke the knocker uppers? A tongue-twister from the time tackled this conundrum:We had a knocker-up, and our knocker-up had a knocker-upAnd our knocker-up’s knocker-up didn’t knock our knocker up, upSo our knocker-up didn’t knock us up?‘Cos he’s not up.?One problem knocker uppers faced was making sure workers did not get woken up for free.“When knocking up began to be a regular trade, we used to rap or ring at the doors of our customers, Mrs. Waters, a knocker upper in the north of England told an intrigued reporter from Canada’s Huron Expositor newspaper in 1878. “The public complained of being disturbed… by our loud rapping or ringing; and the knocker-up soon found out that while he knocked up one who paid him, he knocked up several on each side who did not,” she continued. The solution they hit on was modifying a long stick, with which to tap on the bedroom’s windows of their clients, loudly enough to rouse those intended but softly enough not to disturb the rest.In return for being awakened, customers paid the knocker-up a set weekly fee. These weekly fees were reasonable and usually based on how far the knocker-up had to travel and the time of day the person needed to be awakened. Mrs. Waters charged the following: “All who were knocked up before four o’clock paid … eighteenpence a week; those who had to be awakened … after four gave…a shilling a week; whilst those who had to be aroused from five to six o’clock paid from sixpence to three pence weekly, according to time and distance.” Mrs. Waters claimed she “never earned less than thirty shillings a week; mostly thirty-five; and as high as forty shillings a week.” However, most of Mrs. Waters clients were knocked-up between five and six o’clock in the morning.Knocker-ups developed a system to remember which houses needed to be knocked up and at what time. To keep customers straight, knocker-ups often chalked outside their customer’s homes. They used “all manner of figures, ‘1/2 past 3,’ 1/4 to 4,’ ‘5 o’clock,’ and such.” Sometimes there were more than chalked sidewalks, as it was claimed that in Manchester signboards were often used. Besides displaying the time, the signboards also advertised a knocker-ups business. Such signs could be found hanging “over the doors of dingy cottages, or at the head of flight of steps, leading to some dark cellar-dwelling, containing the words, ‘Knocking-Up Done Here.’The goal of a knocker-up was to get as many customers in the smallest circle as possible and to cover as much ground as possible “in as little time, so it became like a ‘sprint-race.’ For that reason, knocker-ups sometimes exchanged customers with one another. Mrs. Waters never claimed to have exchanged customers, but she did assert her good wages occurred because she devised a system to knock-up a large number of houses in a short time: She found shortcuts through neighborhoods; claimed she took care not to let the grass grow under her feet; and, asserted she had a knack of rousing employers because my knock or ring or way of tapping was more effective than that of other knockers-up.There were large numbers of people carrying out the job, especially in larger industrial towns such as Manchester. Generally, the job was carried out by elderly men and women but sometimes police constables supplemented their pay by performing the task during early morning patrols. In fact, many saw this as a means of supplementing their income and in some cases as more important than their duties in policing the community. ?Robert Paul, the man who discovered the body of Jack the Ripper’s first victim – Mary Nichols, in Bucks Row Whitechapel, described how the policeman he informed saw no reason to let the murder detain him from his knocking up duties. Mr Jones says.?“I saw a policeman in Church-row, just at the top of Buck’s-row, who was going around knocking people up,” Mr Paul told the inquest. “And I told him what I had seen, and I asked him to come, but he did not say whether he should come or not. He continued calling the people up, which I thought was a great shame, after I had told him the woman was dead.”The trade also ran in families. Mary Smith, who used a pea shooter, was a well-known knocker upper in east London and her daughter, also called Mary, followed in her mother’s footsteps. The latter is widely believed to have been one of the capital’s last knocker uppers.With the spread of electricity and affordable alarm clocks, however, knocking up had died out in most places by the 1940s and 1950s.?Yet it still continued in some pockets of industrial England until the early 1970s particularly in the industrial areas around Manchester. It is believed the last knocker up retired from the job, in 1973 in Bolton.Your Next meetings areMarch 12 (AGM)April 10May 8June 12 ................
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