A Family At War; A quirk of fate led to the discovery of letters telling of how a God-fearingMerseyside family faced death, tragedy and love as the old world died. Today,for the first time, the Daily Post publishes extracts from these revealing documents. David Charters reports.

Byline: David Charters

THE father was a man of business, who had placed his trust in God and the ledger book in about equal measure,and even when his young sons were taken from him to fight in World War I, his faith never faltered.

Today, we can learn a little of this man, Thomas Pemberton, who tried so hard to live in the way that he understood, as all the old certainties crumbled around him.

But it was all-important to maintain the stiff-collared manners of the respectable middle-classes, whose money came from prudent management, prayers and hard work, rather than the gambles favoured by families of a more flamboyant nature.

So,as the faces of the young disappeared from the church pews and their names filled the death columns in the newspapers, Thomas wrote of his feelings in a series of letters to his son Harold. They tell of how ordinary, decent people dealt with heroism, shell-shock, death and loss. A way of life was dying and, in the simple words of Thomas, the reader can feel its going.

This was a proud man of decorous style, speaking personally to his ``good son'', though the young man was on a ship far away. You understand at once that he wished his boy was at his side,as once they hadbeen. In the mood of the time, however, people kept their feelings in check, relying, instead, on divine providence. The black-inked sentiments of Thomas, who traded in fruit and vegetables, spread across the pages in the neat hand you'd expect from a man with a keen eye for the profit and loss margins. They come in a strange mixture of the tragic and the banal. Sometimes one affected the other.

For, with so many of the young men gone, some never to return, it was difficult to find staff. It might be necessary in these difficult circumstances, Thomas lamented at one point, to employ agirl.

Life at their home in Wallasey had changed so much. Our ships off the coast were being sunk, Zeppelins were bombing other English towns, there was even a fear that the Germans might invade and the Lusitania had been treacherously sunk.

Against this darkbackground,however,it was important to remember your place in society.

So in one letter, Thomas advised his beloved boy to have his loose teeth replaced. People in authority noticed such things, the father wrote.

In all his travels,Haroldkept these letters, telling of how a prosperous Merseyside family, with high social aspirations made out, when the ambitions of Kaiser Bill and the news from the trenches had clouded their world of country walks,gardening and Bible classes.

Towards the end of his life, Harold laid them in a box under the floor-boards of the summer house in the garden at a residential home.

AND for reasons unknown to us, that is where he left them when he moved to aboarding-house down the road in Malvern, Worcestershire.

There, they would have remained, too,if a storm had not demolished the summerhouse, uprooting the boards.

The box was found in 1976 by Beryl Wilson, an administrative worker at the Malvernbury Home, Abbey Road. Four months ago, she passed them on to her friend Mary Dixey,a retired teacher and amateur historian, whose mother, Evelyn, had met Harold through his voluntary work with the Red Cross.

Now she hopes that friends or relatives of the Pemberton family will contact her through the Daily Post, so that she can form a fuller picture of the family.

In the meantime, we know that ElizaMarion Pemberton, Thomas' first wife and mother of the children, died in 1909.

They had four sons -Philip,born in 1884; Harold, 1886; Geoffrey, 1887; and Hugh, thought to be the youngest and probably born around 1889.

The family had moved to Wallasey from the Blundellsands area. All the boys,except Hugh, attended the nearby Merchant Taylors' Schoolin Crosby.

They moved to St Nicholas Road,Wallasey, where they were living at the outbreak of war,by which time Thomas had married Annie Hammond, a widow with a teenage daughter,Claire. Ironically the second Mrs Pemberton, known as ``Mater'' to the boys,died in 1915 after a long and painful illness, while her step-sons all survived the war.

Philip, Geoffrey and Hugh joined the Army.

The letters immediately excited Miss Dixey's interest. It was astonishing to learn so much about a family at war from the one-way correspondence.

She transcribed the letters into a typed folder and she has travelled to Merseyside to see the family's old house and the surrounding area.

``The letters are absolutely fascinating.'' she says. The first was written by Thomas on August 27,1913, when he was 54 and running TS Pemberton & Davies, fruit merchants, of Abbey Buildings, VictoriaStreet, Liverpool.

On December 6,1914,Thomas introduces the war,in an almost dismissive sentence. ``A few battalions have left for the front including the Liverpool Scottish. Stanley Wardhas gone with these.''

Fourteen days later, the tone is very different. ``Scarborough,Whitby and Hartlepool were bombarded by a squadron of German warships which slipped over in the fog and got away again unpunished. Much damage was done at Scarboroughand Hartlepool and many people, including women and children, were killed. But no landing was attempted. This raid has given great impetus to recruiting. Phil and Beatrice (his wife) are at home together. Geoff may be home for Christmas. I heard from Hugh yesterday from Winchester. His battalion (The RFA) will cross to France this weekend.''

Amid the gathering gloom, you also sense that there was a fear of invasion, or at least coastal raids. By January 17,Hugh was in Belgium in a field hospital about 3,000 yards from the front. Thomas reflects the uncomplaining mood of the time. ``Hugh says the infantry are standing waist-deep in liquid mud -poor fellows,'' wrote Thomas. ``The shells pass over the little hospitaldaily. He is well and in good spirits.'' But by February the war was being felt at home. ``I have heard nothing further from Hugh,but Miss Hankey (his fiancee) says he is well and unhurt. Alec Strachan is also in France, lonely and anxious. We had some German submarines in the Irish Sea last week. They sank three small steamers but no lives were lost. It brought the war very near to us. This event was taken calmly in Liverpool ... The Germans appear to be very clever with their submarines but they cannot intimidate the British people.''

At this point Thomas expresses his hope that Harold,as an ex-public school man, will soon gain acommission. In correspondence before the war, when Harold was preparing for an important interview, the father had been informed about the poor condition of his son's teeth. ``The man you will have to meet is a very smart person and takes notice of all those little things. It is most essential that your appearance should be smart, so if your new teeth will not be ready,I should advise you to defer your visit.'' But it was no longer a world for trivial thoughts. On March 23,1915,Thomas wrote: ``Poor Geoff has been in the thick of it. He was in the great battle of Neuve Chapelle -in the trenches for three days and nights -afterwards called out with his battalion to cover the charge of the regulars. He describes it as an awfulcarnage. Their battalion lost 16 killed and 35 wounded. But thank God Geoff escaped safe and sound and is now out of the firing line for a time.. I am well. Business is quiet. Very little fruit coming in at the moment and the prices are high ... It is awkward but in wartime we must put up with inconveniences.''

By May 2,it was apparent that Geoff was not safe or sound. ``He is still in the base camp in Boulogne,'' wrote his father. ``His feet are so sore that he cannot walk. He does not say so, but I think his nerves must be wrong after the severe fight at Neuve Chapelle ... I took Communion this morning. I tried to think that we were together in spirit.'' In his next letter on May 10,Thomas is full of indignation. ``All Liverpool is excited about the Lusitania,More than 1,000 people lost their lives through the dastardly conduct of our cowardly enemies. There have been serious riots here. Nearly every German shop in Liverpool has been looted by infuriated crowds. Many places were set on fire. This conduct is silly and useless,but it is not surprising.'' By June, the shortage of young labour forced Thomas and his partner to hire a young man who had been judged unfit for military service. ``This will be better than having a girl in the office.''

Later ,however, they had to hire a young lady. IN JULY, there was good news of Hugh whose conduct at Ypres had been noted in despatches. A Military Cross seemed likely. Also in that month there was grim news close to a greengrocer's heart. A steamer had been sunk carrying 5,000 cases of onions and 5,000 oforanges.

The extraordinary level of Thomas' religious devotion can be seen in the letter describing the death of Mater. ``You asked life for her and God has given her Eternal life -so your prayers have been answered.'' Perhaps the saddest entry of allcamein a simple observation in a letter of March 18. ``I attended the midday Lent Service at St Nicholas (Liverpool's ParishChurch). The congregation was smaller than usual, chiefly middle- aged and old men. The young men a remostly gone now.''

The letters Harold carried with him ended soon after that. But it is known that all the boys lived. Harold got his commission in August 1918. Hugh married a nurse called Nancy. They hadababy daughter and moved to a hospital in Archangel, Russia. Thomas died in October 6,1928,aged 64.

Miss Dixey spoke of what she had learned of the family following the discovery of Harold's letters. ``I know from doing research in Malvern that Harold belonged to the Royal British Legion here and the King George Fund for Sailors. Sohe was full of good works.

``Beryl Wilson gave me the letters because she knew of my love of research and I was quickly hooked on them.

``Haroldmoved around quite abit,ending up in different boarding-houses where landladies looked after residential guests. Several people remember him as anice, rather lonely man whom they would invite for lunch. ``There were even mothers who did his washing for him. We don't know why he came to Malvern, but from his clothing coupons I can tell that he was here by the end of World War II. ``The amazing thing is that four boys in the services should have survived. I have a feeling from the letters that Harold and Hugh were the favourites. But the father was a man trying to run a business in the most difficult circumstances.''

CAPTION(S):

HIDDEN HISTORY: A photograph from 1913 is believed to be of Thomas Pemberton and his second wife,Annie; above, retired teacher and amateur historian,Mary Dixey, who is trying to find out more about the family; top, right, Philip Pemberton; and, right, the residential home in Malvern where Harold lived and mysteriously hid the treasured; letters