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| Sidney Buckle, Norman Buckle, Elsie Buckle (nee Smith) |
This photo is Norman with his mum (Elsie) and dad (Sidney) and I think he looks about one year old. My guess is that they had this picture taken to celebrate his first birthday. They were quite old parents (especially for that era) as Elsie was 39 and Sidney was 43 when Norman was born. They'd already had a son (Vernon) in 1921 but he'd only lived for a few days before he died. Sidney was a coal miner in the South Yorkshire coal fields as were his father and grandfather before him. Norman had left school and gone to work in an office just before the outbreak of WW2. He signed up for the Fleet Air Arm in 1942 and after training as a radio mechanic for a year he was sent to the Royal Navy air-base at a village called Hastings, near Freetown the capital of Sierra Leone.