As a little lad living in old Lyon St, Hebburn Quay late 1940s into the 1950s I often called into Gamble’s Paper Shop on Argyle St. The shop was on the block opposite the Ellison St junction and was run by Mr & Mrs Tom Gamble who I can still picture.
Mrs Gamble was a small tubby lady who always had a hat on & glasses. Her husband Tom was a small pleasant man who always had a cap on. Even though he was small, Mr Gamble always owned a big modern car.
Most of us kids knew nothing about the two wars that had taken place before we came along because people in those days just got on with their lives and never talked about the old days. How lucky our generation were and I still appreciate how easy our lives have been in comparison to previous generations.
It is only in the last 20 odd years that I read a Newspaper article on how little Mr Gamble had fought in ww1.
Below is the story I read.
Mr Tom Gamble cheated death twice whilst serving in the British Army in France during ww1.
Both times he was saved by what was in his breast pockets ie a Bible & a Cigarette Case.
Tom & his brother Henry joined up in 1914 to fight for King & Country.
Henry was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and Tom had the first of his incredible escapes on the same offensive when shrapnel from a bomb hit the Bible in his breast pocket.
The Bible had been given to him by the Vicar of St Cuthbert’s Church in Hebburn.
Appropriately on the cover (probably the inner cover) of the bible was written ‘May it protect you’
Later in WW1 a ball bearing hit his Cigarette Case in that same breast pocket which saved him from certain death.
On another day in WW1, Tom’s luck ran out & he was shot and sent back to his regiment’s base in Brighton to recuperate.
He recovered well and after the war Tom went on to open a Newsagent Shop in Argyle St.
Realising how lucky he had been he mounted the piece of shrapnel onto a sixpence & proudly used it as a tie pin.
He told people that he was saved by God thanks to the bible and later because also because he was a cigarette smoker.
Tom died about 1962 and his Bible, Cigarette case, shrapnel & ball bearing were passed onto the family.
Norman Dunn