“My mother, Dorothy Wellspring, and her mother, Catherine Wellspring, ‘walking’ along O’Connell Street, September 1932. This set of three photos, taken one after another, formed a postcard which would have been subsequently separated into three pieces and possibly sent to different people. In 1910 Catherine married Private Owen Wellspring, 1st Battalion Irish Guards. Owen left the army in 1912, but when the First World War broke out he rejoined the Irish Guards as a corporal. In September 1914 he was sent to Caterham Barracks in Surrey, England, where he trained soldiers for the western front and rose to the rank of sergeant. Catherine joined him in Caterham in 1915 and their daughter, Dorothy, was born there in May 1916. Owen was sent to the western front in June 1916 and was killed on 2 August 1917 in Flanders at the Battle of Passchendaele (the Third Battle of Ypres) during the main assault, which had begun at the end of July. A dogged struggle against determined German opposition and the rapidly deteriorating weather ended in November with the capture of Passchendaele Ridge.”
(1932)
Submitted by Bob Smyth