Henry Charles Deamster Hornsby was born on 16^th May 1909 at Pace Bush, Choppington, Northumberland. His parents were Demster Hornsby and Annie Hornsby (née Johnson).

He was named Henry after both of his grandfathers (Henry Hornsby and Henry Johnson). Known to his parents and immediate family as Henry, he was always referred to as Harry by everyone else.

Early life

Harry lived at Pace Bush, Choppington, for the first 19 years of his life. He had three sisters, Eleanor (born 5^th December 1903), Elizabeth (born 10^th December 1906) and Margaret (born 10^th May 1915). 

In 1902 Harry’s father Demster (pronounced Deemster) Hornsby had left his job as under-manager of Lumley Colliery in Co. Durham to take up the post of manager of Choppington Colliery, which was owned by the Bebside and Choppington Coal Company. He started work at Choppington shortly before his marriage to Annie Johnson. Annie had been headmistress of Herrington School in Co. Durham but had had to terminate her employment when she married Demster on 29^th September 1902.

It seems clear that Pace Bush was owned by the coal company and rented by Harry’s parents. This is borne out by the fact that the next two managers of Choppington Colliery after Demster Hornsby left his post in 1928 both lived at Pace Bush with their families. 

Pace Bush was a substantial property. The 1911 Census recorded that it had eight rooms (excluding bathroom and scullery). I believe that it had formerly been a farm as it had an old Granary. The family kept hens and ducks.

The 1911 Census recorded that, as well as Harry, his parents and his then two sisters, the family had a domestic servant, Dorothy Ann Atkinson, aged 20.

In 1919, at the age of 10, Harry suffered an accident at Choppington in which he lost the sight of his right eye when it was unfortunately punctured by a foreign body whilst he was playing. 

Harry was a pupil at Morpeth Grammar School from 1920, taking the train from Choppington to Morpeth each day.  

The 1921 Census recorded Harry as a 12 year old schoolboy. His sisters Eleanor (17), Elizabeth (14) and Margaret (6) were also attending school. The Census once again recorded that the family were employing a domestic servant, one Elizabeth Ann Thompson (19).

The family continued to live at Pace Bush until 1928 when Harry’s father resigned as manager of Choppington Colliery. The reason for this, according to later accounts by family members, was that the owners, now known as the Choppington Coal Company, wanted to open up new workings which Demster Hornsby considered to be unsafe, and he resigned rather than acquiesce in the development. There is some evidence to support this.

Firstly, there is a report from the Morpeth Herald of 17^th August 1928, which stated:

Leaving Choppington. 

Councillor D. Hornsby, who has been Manager of the Choppington Colliery for many years, is severing his connection with the Choppington Coal Company.

Councillor Hornsby is highly popular and esteemed in the Bedlington District.

This suggests that it was Harry’s father’s decision to leave, rather than the Coal Company’s.

Secondly, there are some known figures for the number of men employed at Choppington Colliery:

1925	Choppington A Pit – 578 (443 below ground and 135 above ground)
	Choppington B Pit – 10  ( 8 below ground and 2 above ground)
1930	Choppington A Pit – 991 (745 below ground and 246 above ground)
	Choppington B Pit – 551  (437 below ground and 114 above ground)

The substantial increase in numbers suggests that further workings were indeed opened up in both pits.

Thirdly, there is what my Auntie Joan (Joan Besford (née Matthews)) told me in later life. She remembered her father John Matthews, then employed as a weighman at Choppington Colliery, coming home and announcing in a shocked manner “Mr. Hornsby’s gone!”.

Amateur radio

The result of Demster Hornsby leaving his job was that the family had to leave their home at Pace Bush. It seems that they stayed initially with Mary Elizabeth Hornsby, Demster’s second cousin, at the Quarrie, a house in Cramlington Village. This is indicated by a letter sent to Harry’s mother by the Choppington and District Nursing Association, thanking her for her work with them, dated 10^th September 1928. It seems that the family stayed there for at least the next year, This is indicated by the T&R Bulletin of October 1929. This was the Journal of the Incorporated Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB). The RSGB was the organisation of amateur radio enthusiasts, or “Hams” as they were known. The October 1929 Bulletin lists Harry as a new member, living at the Quarry (sic) Cramlington. This would suggest that he had got his antenna mast and other equipment set up at the Quarrie and that a move was not thought to be  imminent.

Harry’s devotion to his hobby of transmitting and receiving radio messages in Morse Code would have interesting consequences when the Second World War broke out. 

G5QY was Harry’s call sign, as can be seen on the card below:

It was the practice for Radio Hams to send cards to each other through the post confirming details of having “worked” each other by communicating over the airwaves in Morse Code. The card shown above was sent by Harry to a Ham in Sweden (SM7YG), following receipt of his card on 31^st August 1931.  The card shows that the family had by this time moved to 7 Lansdowne Crescent, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne. It also tells us that Harry was a member of the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB), the British Empire Radio Union (BERU) and the Rag Chewers Club (RCC). To become a member of the latter you had to make a contact and have a conversation in Morse Code for at least 30 minutes.

The following extract from Wireless World, dated 30^th December 1932 tells us more about Harry’s activities at the time:

The extract also shows that the Hornsby family were still living at 7 Lansdowne Terrace at this point.

Two further items relating to Harry’s activities as a radio ham indicate that Demster and Annie Hornsby moved with their family to 105 Kenton Lane, Newcastle, in the latter half of 1934. The first of these is a short item featured in the July 1934 edition of QST, an American amateur radio publication:

The second item is from the Fall (Autumn) of 1934 Radio Amateur Callbook magazine, another American publication. This records Harry (G5QY) being contacted by K7BFJ, a Ham in the United States, and states his address as “Newlands”, Kenton, Newcastle. Newlands was the name Harry’s parents gave to their house at 105 Kenton Lane. 

It seems that Harry wasted no time in setting up his radio installation at Kenton Lane. The photograph below shows his antenna mast in the back garden. This is a photo taken very early on after the move to Kenton Lane, as can be seen from the fact that the back garden has only a lawn – it would become a very well-stocked and well-tended garden in the months and years to come.

Harry had begun working as a wireless engineer for the Northern Goldsmiths in the 1930s. He was based at their shop at the corner of Westgate Road and Clayton Street West in Newcastle. He worked on the repair and maintenance of customers’ wireless sets.

In 1938 Harry became a member of the American Radio Relay League’s A-1 Operator Club.

Also in 1938 he took part in the Deutscher Jahres DX-Contest (German Annual Long Distance Contest) and came second out of the 23 England-based Hams who entered.

Royal Air Force career

One year after the war broke out, Harry left civilian life in Newcastle and joined the Royal Air Force.  He enlisted on 14^th September 1940 at RAF Padgate. Padgate was a suburb of Warrington, Cheshire. The RAF base there was used to provide basic training for new recruits.

Harry’s service records show that his medical examination graded him as “Category 2(a) Vision”. This meant that he was passed fit but only for ground or limited flying duties because of his vision. He entered service as an AC2 which was the lowest rank of Aircraftman 2^nd Class.

His records show that on 20^th September 1940 he was next sent to 7RC, which was recruiting centre no. 7 at Morecambe, Lancashire. 

Because of his civilian work as a wireless engineer and his enthusiastic pursuit of his hobby as a Radio “Ham”, the RAF employed Harry as a wireless mechanic. He was promoted to Aircraftman First Class while he undertook RAF specific training and achieved a proficiency of 85% when tested on 9^th December 1940. From this date he was promoted to Leading Aircraftman.

Harry was assigned to the RAF in the Middle East and embarked on a troop ship bound for Egypt on 4^th January 1941. The journey took more than two months, one of the chief reasons for this being that the troop ship had to adopt a zig-zag pattern to minimise the risk of its interception and destruction by the Luftwaffe from the air or by U-boats from below. The route was also much longer as the Mediterranean was very dangerous given the proximity of enemy forces, This meant that troop ships bound for Egypt had to sail down the west coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, and up the east coast of Africa to the Suez Canal. The ship on which Harry sailed docked at Freetown (Sierra Leone), Durban (South Africa), Cape Town (South Africa), Djibouti, and Mombasa (Kenya), before entering the Suez Canal and reaching its final destination of Port Said (Egypt).

Harry was then stationed at RAF Ismailia, arriving there on 13^th March 1941. This was located about two and a half miles west-northwest of the city of Ismailia and 72 miles north-east of the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Harry’s posting at RAF Ismailia coincided with Germany joining the desert war in March 1941 in the shape of the Afrika Korps commanded by Rommel. This dramatically bolstered the Italian forces who had been fighting there since June 1940. The fighting would ebb and flow until the second Battle of El Alamein (23^rd October – 11^th November 1942) where the Allies won a decisive victory. From this point the Axis forces were in retreat until their final expulsion from North Africa in February 1943. Although Harry did not see action as a wireless operator, he was on one occasion required to guard Italian prisoners of war. Whilst doing this he was equipped with a captured Italian rifle which had “Torino 1897” stamped on its barrel!

The RAF station at Ismailia was subjected to air raids which were repelled with anti-aircraft guns and intercepting allied fighters. Harry told a story of one air raid where, as men donned their steel helmets and ran for cover, one man was spotted by an officer running with a piece of paper tied on to his head with a rubber band under his chin. When the officer queried what the man had on his head he was told “Sir, it’s his deficiency chit for a helmet”!

Harry was promoted to Corporal on 1^st June 1941.

The men who operated the Wireless Telegraphy Station at RAF Ismailia adopted a stray dog which had been hanging around the place. They named it Rex and let it stay with them, feeding it in their mess hut.

Rex very sadly died of a convulsion on 23^rd November 1941. The men had become very fond of the dog and buried him at RAF Ismailia. A gun salute was fired over his grave and Harry wrote the following poem (click to expand images):

We are fortunate to have an Airgraph letter dated 2^nd January 1942 which Harry sent to his sister Elizabeth (now married, and Elizabeth Raine) and family in Lincoln. They had been evacuated to Lincoln from their home in Coventry following the devastating 11 hour German bombing of Coventry on 14^th/15^th November 1940. The letter reads as follows:-

1069433 Cpl. Hornsby
No. 3 Mess
RAF
Ismailia
M.E.F.

My Dear Elizabeth, Charles & all, 

Many thanks for your airgraph received last evening. Glad to hear you have got settled down in your new home. Had quite a good Xmas and New Year. Sorry to hear of your colds and hope all well again now. Had some very cool weather here & rain recently and cold nights. One feels them too altho’ really they compared well with an English summers night.

I haven’t any snaps at moment but hope to get some of camels etc. for L, K and Ann! Don’t forget to send her drawings: yes I sure remember your historical drawings! I have had lots of letters etc. recently so I can’t complain. I hope to be on leave in a few days time and see some green grass for a change.

I hope you all had a good Xmas & New Year. We had a huge feed on Xmas Day & such a lot to drink that most of us went to sleep. I got to a party on Boxing Day and nearly wore myself out speaking French for hours on end & thinking out every sentence in French. I was talking to a Yugoslav girl you see and she only spoke Yugoslav, French and Arabic. Unfortunately I had to leave early as was on duty. Last night I managed to get to the pictures & saw one of these Andy Hardy efforts and had quite a good laugh. Also a good cartoon. Well must close now. Will write again soon. Love to all xxxxx

Tell children I have a snap of some real camels which am sending soon. Cheers all. Yours Henry.

Harry received a most unwelcome 33rd birthday present when he was hospitalised with sandfly fever on 16^th May 1942. This was caused by a virus transmitted when bitten by sandflies. Although short-lived, the symptoms were most unpleasant, consisting of fever, headache, nausea and vomiting. Harry was  discharged 3 weeks later on 6^th June. We can again get a brief glimpse into Harry’s time in Egypt from another Airgraph letter which he sent to his sister Elizabeth  and family in Lincoln. The Airgraph is dated 6^th June 1942, and was sent from the hospital from which Harry was about to be discharged. It reads as follows:

1069433 Cpl. Hornsby
42 Gen. Hospital
M.E.F.

My Dear Elizabeth, Charles & all,

Many thanks for your P.C. of 4 May which I received on the 19^th. I have been in here since my birthday and this is my third day out of bed and feel alright now except a little shaky. Have had sand fly fever! Thanks very much indeed for all your good wishes for my birthday and will be delighted to receive those snaps. Been very hot here last few days and shall be glad when we get some cool breezes. Please don’t write to the above address as I expect to be out in a week at the latest so just write to normal place. Yes, I received your A.G.ok and have replied to it. I guess England will be looking lovely now – can just imagine it. I have a few geraniums and sweet peas flowering very nicely back at my unit and they somehow grow even in the sand. Hope to get some delphiniums to grow next. Well must close now so love to you all xxxxxx

Yours Henry

On New Years Eve 1942 Harry was promoted to Sergeant, his conduct having been rated as “very good” and his ability as a wireless mechanic as “superior”.

Harry’s service record indicates   that from 3^rd June 1943 he was put in charge of the wireless telegraphy station at RAF Ismailia. He was awarded a Good Conduct Badge (a chevron which was stitched to the uniform) on 14^th September 1943. 

Harry returned to the UK on a troop ship, arriving home in early 1944. He said that when the ship docked, before anyone disembarked, they were addressed by a senior officer on the dockside. He welcomed them with the news that they were back in time for the Second Front in Europe and was met with jeers, catcalls and a hail of cheap cigarettes! Everyone just wanted to see their homes and loved ones again.

Harry was next assigned to RAF Alness on Cromarty Firth in north east Scotland. RAF Alness was part of Coastal Command, and was an operational training unit. Harry was promoted to the rank of Flight Sergeant (the RAF equivalent of the Army’s Sergeant Major) with effect from 1^st March 1944.

His duties at Alness involved leading a team which serviced and maintained radio communications at the RAF station itself and on flying boats, These were of two types, the British Sunderland Flying Boat and the American Catalina Flying Boat. The Sunderlands had a fearsome reputation, being known to the Germans as “Fliegendes Stachelschwein” (flying porcupines) because they bristled with machine guns.

Harry had not been long at Alness when he developed glaucoma in the eye which he had damaged as a young boy some 25 years earlier. This must have been what is known as Absolute Glaucoma where the eye is blind and subject to uncontrolled pressure. He was admitted to the military hospital at Fenham Barracks, Newcastle, on 20^th March 1944, and had to have the eye removed. He was discharged from the hospital on 1^st April 1944. 

Harry was then sent by the RAF to see about getting an artificial eye. By all accounts this turned out to be an extremely good match for his remaining good eye. He then returned to duty at RAF Alness but unfortunately had an accident whilst cycling alongside Cromarty Firth. He was riding along and looking at the birdlife out in the Firth when he went into the back of a vehicle which had come to a halt. He was sent flying from his bike and his artificial eye ended up irretrievable somewhere in the waters of Cromarty Firth. He was sent for a replacement and then continued his service at Alness.

Return to civilian life

At the end of the war Harry was offered a commission by the RAF but turned this down in favour of a return to civilian life, returning to his home in Kenton and his job with the Northern Goldsmiths. He was officially released from service with the RAF on 10^th February 1946, with a rating of Class A, Character “very good” and Proficiency “superior”. He was released as a Class “G” Reserve, remaining subject to recall until 16^th May 1954 (his 45^th birthday).

Harry’s sister Eleanor had worked for some years at Hirst North School, Ashington, where Dora Besford was one of her colleagues. Harry met Dora when Eleanor brought her to 105 Kenton Lane. They were married on 27^th July 1948 at St. Hilda’s Parish Church, Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne. Harry and Dora went to live at 6 Embassy Gardens, Denton Burn.

On 20^th March 1951 their son John Hornsby was born at Newcastle General Hospital.

Harry became absorbed with astronomy in the 1960s and built his own telescope, with a stand, bearings on which it moved, a scale with which to set the position, and a watch which worked on sidereal time. Harry’s nephew David Besford recollects playing a part in the telescope’s construction:

“I made the main bearing for his telescope because Harry wanted it to be very precise and strong enough to take the weight. I was taking metalwork at school at the time and had the facilities to do the job. He adjusted the balance wheel in an old clock watch so that it ran at sidereal time which helped him in tracking and finding different stars.”