![]() The children had all been at boarding school for some years and the parting of the ways of their parents didn’t seem to affect them too badly. Whilst in Malaya I had decided to leave the Army at the age of 42 and try my luck in the big outside world. By this time we had three children, Pip, Nick and Mark, but long periods apart do not help a marriage and, unfortunately, it fell apart. I then married Audrey Barlow who had been in the WRENS and I/we saw service in Hong Kong, Singapore, Cyprus, Kenya, Jamaica, North Africa, various UK postings leading to a final two year period with the Gurkha Division in Malaysia. It was that option or going in penury to university so I was glad to accept. As a result I was offered a regular commission in the Royal Army Service Corps. Of course we then had to attend the selection procedure for regular commissions. A fellow officer and I discovered that the only quick way home to England and English girls was to volunteer for a regular commission- something I had not thought of before! It worked like a charm and in ten days we were on a plane via the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, the Gambia and Lisbon in Portugal to dear old England. This we did and then I seemed doomed to spend the remaining year of my service at Kaduna in Northern Nigeria. Once again the war ended before I got there! Soon we were off by troopship to Nigeria to demob our soldiers. I arrived in Bombay as a young subaltern in the Royal Sussex Regiment for onward posting not to the Indian Army as expected but to the West African Frontier Force Reece Regiment with 82 West African Division upcountry in Burma. After six weeks I was selected as a potential officer and went via Aldershot training battalion and pre-OCTU at Wrotham in Kent to an OCTU in the Isle of Man(which seemed about as far away from the war as one could get in the UK) Anyway, the war in Europe was over by then so we were busy learning about jungle warfare ready to be sent to the Far East. On the 31st of August 1944, I joined the army and reported to a training establishment near Newcastle. I found records for George and Harry and Ann as well. All were attributed to James Henry Tapply and his wife Elizabeth. In fact, as I got access to English christening records I found my grandfather, his brother George, his sister Elizabeth and his brother Thomas. I can find no such person attributed to James Gilbee. If you look at the tree above, which I believe came from Alan, you see James of Maidstone. But as I dug and dug and dug I could find NOTHING proving our line came from James Gilbee Tapply. No doubt he did the best he could with what he had pre-internet. Alan Tapply who wrote The Tapplys of Kent. One person makes a mistake, it gets repeated and before you know it you have 'facts' that are anything BUT. This is an object lesson on a family game of 'telephone'. Jon has shared with me some of the correspondence which I will transcribe here. Long before I became motivated to actually ACT on my curiosity about the Tapply family, Mark Tapply and Jon Tapply were on the case. We believe Ferne is to the far left on the front row with her hands clasped. Jane was always very dark-haired and petite. ![]() ![]() I can't be sure, but I think Jane is right in front of her. This time, my mom is the one at the end of the arrow. Here's some of the same group again in 6th grade. The three cousins were in school together all 12 grades. We think the little girl with the white collar to Jane's left would be Ferne Tapply. On the first row with the very straight bangs and shiny dark hair is Jane Tapply. That might be her friend Pauline Morency (Punky) right next to her. The second grade picture above shows my mom- second row far right grinning at the camera. My mom recalls wearing layers of clothes against the cold winds whipping down North Street. This is where my mom and her cousins went to school in the lower grades.įrom my mom's house on Garfield Street it wouldn't have been a terrible walk, but very cold and treacherous in the winter. The schools around the university became "lab" schools for the trainees. ![]() But a university was established there: Fitchburg Normal School, later Fitchburg Teachers College and now Fitchburg State College. Fitchburg was almost past its best days even when she was a girl. My mom came from a mid-sized factory town in central Massachusetts.
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