An old biscuit tin

I thought I would post this, seeing as the horrific ex-boyfriend* who wanted me to write something for his history blog is clearly never going to.

*he's alright really.

These are pieces from an old biscuit box that my Dad has had in a cupboard for as long as I can remember.  When I was a kid I thought it was stuff which belonged to my Grandad during the war. I never met my Grandad – he died when I was about eight, and he didn’t have much contact with my Dad. Around the time he died I was shown a photo of him taken in 1944, in his army gear, feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. So I always thought of him as a soldier, and I probably assumed the box had been his because it was from the war, and because I only ever (and only still) listen to and put together the bits of stories which I like or which grab my attention, and this usually leads to me accidentally making up a lot of stuff without realising.

When I persuaded my Dad to take the box down again and let me take pictures for this blog, it became obvious that this wasn’t my Grandad’s box. It turned out that it belonged to a guy called Robert William Sumpton, who was a boyfriend of my Gran’s. I was a bit pissed off about that to be honest, because it meant a bit of what I thought I’d known about my Grandad was gone, and that I only had the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Then I started looking through it.


Robert William Sumpton, or Bob, as he called himself, was in the Royal Signal Corp and was taken prisoner by the Germans in the late summer of 1942. I suppose the first his family knew about it was when they received the first item pictured, mail they’d tried to send him which looks like it went through dozens of postal offices before someone had the nasty job of stamping it with horrible purple ink and sending it back to his waiting wife. I can’t imagine the chill which must have washed over her – Annie, she was called - when she saw that envelope back in her letterbox.

It looks like she kept writing to him, somehow, but then in June 1944 you see a letter from the Royal Signals Records office, remitting a radio message from Bob saying he’s not heard from her in a while and that he’d like her to keep writing. The RSR officer carefully handwrites the personal message and then signs off with a  stern reminder not to let Bob know she heard his message this way. I much prefer the second letter, penned neatly in green ink from a Mrs Webster in Yorkshire, which relays the message in a much kinder tone. You hear a lot about Blitz spirit, but this is the only thing I’ve seen which makes me really believe it exists. From what I can make out, Mrs Webster was of the dutiful Allied listeners to the Axis broadcasts, who scanned their shortwave radios listening for messages from prisoners to then pass on to families. Apparently families could often receive up to 100 messages at once, often before the government contacted them with the same message.

I suppose Annie and Bob’s marriage probably ended acrimoniously if his box fell into the possession of my Gran, but he must have loved her, and she him. She’s the one who must have saved the returned mail, the letters about the radio broadcast. He’d saved a poem from something called the Alliance of Honour, reminding him to think of her during the bad times. I can’t entirely like this poem, despite thinking it must have given him a lot of comfort. It reminds me too much of Jessie Pope. And it seems to be implying that if you get scared of the worst conflict in modern history, you’re somehow to be ashamed. I don’t know if this poem would have helped all imprisoned men, really.

Although it’s definitely love – of some sort or other – that helped Bob through. The thing I find most touching in this box is a hand printed note in a tatty notebook, which says that his life as a prisoner can never be a happy one, but that he never wants to forget ‘those pals who’s cheerfulness and friendship has helped us all through this difficult period’. Underneath that note are about five or six pages of carefully transcribed names and addresses. He must have taken them when he was leaving the prison camp, but there’s no haste or scribble in the words. He wanted to make sure he was writing them down correctly.

As I said, this isn’t my Grandad’s box. He was never a prisoner of war. Neither was my other Grandad - and he doesn’t speak about the war, and soon won’t remember he ever fought it. But this box still makes me feel closer to both of them, as well as to Bob. And my Grans too, come to that. Because Bob seems like quite a typical sort of guy, and there’s also so much stuff in here – that I haven’t even had the time to photograph: mundane lists of where he was stationed and what his pay was, a pressed flower, a reluctantly well-thumbed German/English dictionary, scribbled doodles – that you get a picture of what life must have been like for a hell of a lot of people. An entire generation. Guys and girls my age, locked away from each other in billet boxes and bomb shelters and prison camps, split up by entire oceans.

Post script:
I can’t do the medals credit in writing as I don’t know anything about them – which were standard awards and which weren’t. Bob was awarded 4 and they’re pictured here, along with the card confirming which is which.

I should also mention that my Dad, Paul, would very much like to return this box to Bob’s family, although we have no idea where to start. I believe they may have come from the Durham area. If you believe you are related to Robert William Sugden, please contact rebeccawinson@gmail.com.