by David Moore

Have you ever bought two identical postcards? I expect we have all at some time got home to find our purchase is already in the collection box, but I mean have you ever deliberately purchased two identical cards at the same time. I did this recently, I saw them at a fair, passed them by, and then deliberately drove out to the dealers shop to purchase them. The cards in themselves are interesting, but I was intrigued as to why someone should send the same card to the same person and, to add to the mystery, they were sent on the same day, exactly one year apart. Respectively the 22nd day of December 1914 and 1915.

They were sent from Nottingham to Sudbury in Suffolk, obviously as Christmas greeting cards but why I wonder the same card. Was it a genuine mistake? Over the year had she forgot which card she sent the previous year? Was it deliberate? Some sort of private joke? (I am guilty of this, having sent one IWA card to a friend, four years running.) Is it more subtle, are the figures in the card relatives, a nephew or niece perhaps.

The Canal. Loughborough

In the first one the sender complains that the war has effected trade. The most interesting part though is that she says that her sister and her sister's daughter were in Scarborough when it was shelled by German warships. This must have been a frightening experience; previously civilians had been immune from the direct effects of war, but the Great War saw for the first time towns exposed to shelling and bombing. Scarborough and Hartlepool were both attacked on the 16th of December 1914. Hartlepool's ordeal began at about 8 o'clock in the morning. The German battleship Moltke with her 11" guns and supported by an armoured cruiser firing six inch shells opened fire from close range. The first shells hit the promenade and then the Grand Hotel was struck. Shells also hit the castle and the walls, 10 feet think in places, were shattered. The loss of life was just four children and 13 adults but with many more wounded. Scarborough did not get off so lightly, however, three battle cruisers shelled from about 4,000 yards. Although little military damage was done, apart from one gasholder, some 100 persons were killed and nearly 450 wounded.

As the last of the raiders sailed away from Whitby at around 9:30 AM they were intercepted by the British fleet. On one side they had the first battle cruisers of Sir David Beatty, and on the other the second battle squadron with eight super Dreadnought battleships, the most powerful battleships then afloat. Luck however came to the aid of the German ships, just as the British ships were preparing to fire, a fog bank obscured the enemy ships and the German fleet altered course and escaped. The Germans however did not get away scot free, in the fog the battle cruiser Von der Tann rammed and sunk the light cruiser Frauenlob.

It would appear that our postcard sender's family escaped unharmed, and we are told, without damage to their home.

This is another example of the interesting stories the reverse side of the card and a little research can lead to.