This is my thitd posting on new found Keltio. Perhaps Father Bill could redirect this to new thread as I have never seen
similar Celtic posting on xmarks.
My Scottish ancestors were Cooks. presumed to have left North West Scotland in 1600's. Scottish friends say I look like a
Pictish Scot. All the smiling faces cover over my text on right hand side of screen.
Captain James Cook worked on a farm before his Career with Whitby Colliers. ref Staithes in Yorkshire.
Captain John Cook drowned in POOLE HARBOUR South Dorset 1725 ; ref Poole Museum on old Quay.
My Granny was Agnes Cook born 1880's Family of sea traders and Captains going back over hundred years.
One of my Cousin's reference is to shares in a Baltic timber ship. A presumption is that the ships went out with Dorset wool and came back with the timber. My mother worked for Bolsons timber as a trainee shorthand secretary probably in 1934.
My Cook Family move to Parkstone after their success in Poole.That is where Agness Cook came from.
Father was a Powell. I am Roderick Hart Powell I am five foot five and weigh nine stone. Look like a medieval mariner from Poole Quay.
My skin is very dark and but not weather beaten.I did have a pair of shoes to wear to School.
Now Agness Cook's aunt may have been called Cookie. Aggie had jet Black hair till she was Ninety.
Patsie ,my cousin looks Indian to me.
I have an Indian Lady living two doors up the road .Her husband comes from Yorkshire. Her boy with his two toddlers lives next door to me.
I have an Italian lady living at the bottom of my garden.Her plot is at right angles to mine.
A Captain Cook came back from his travels with a dark eyed Spanish Maiden. SHE WAS NOT SPANNISH. You go down to far west of Cornwall .Tales of Spanish Raids and Portuguese White slave raids.
My father was out there when they needed them. St Nazaire Dix Nough Quarant. Pardon , Moi , je parle francaise comme une vashe Espanole.
One of my mates is the descendant of a pair of Scottish Privateers. Two brothers who were ship wrecked in the Purbecks in !588 in a gale of wind.They were after the Spanish treasure. Bright red hair. Probably Viking raiders. Story goes that They built a cottage on the beach. My Mate' great uncle was evicted from the cottage in 1941 when the Work up for D Day started.
What did you do in the War Dad ? " I was brain washed into patriotism, Held one round of a small arms ammo in the whole of the war.
We torched up a convoy of our own trucks in a road full of French Refugees south of Nantes a week after Dunkirk to stop the Nazis getting through. after three months on a ship we end up pitching a tented army workshop at Basra. and lived in tents in the sand
for three and a half years. Geographically the Persian Gulf was described as the Backside of the Earth. I understand that navigators explain that Basra was Seven miles inland from the Persian Gulf.
That was not the end if the road. American Diamond 'T 's ,Macks and 3 Ton Chevvies moved north to the Russian Front. for about three and a half years. The British mobile workshop followed the American Units as skilled repair teams. They could understand The Complex sevice Manuals. My old man did not start working on Rolls Royce engines until 1930. They had no spares for the rich Jews RR Cars in Bournemouth . South Coast Uk . He was working six miles down the road from my Cook family Home.
Imagine again the noise from a v sixteen early Herculese Diesel powering a seventy ton gross pay load unit up through a mountain pass of unmade roads on the way to the Russian Front .This kept the Nazis out of Europe.
My father was a Powell, a welsh follower of St Paul. A Celt.
His part in this expedition Came from his love of his countryside.A true Celt.
regiment of tanks had to be moved from America to the the Russian Front . He was one of the N.C.O. Keeping this Expedition to defeat the Nazis rolling. Consider how many tanks were used by the Regiment . What were the Logistics of moving each tank while the Diamond T transporter unit was burning Diesel at Six miles to the gallon ? How many barrels of fuel were needed for the transporter unit to complete its Task ? It was just a days work for my father.
He refered to me and my kilted friends as Haggis Bashers. He had had more serious things to occupy his mind. The only aircraft he ever saw in his war were a patrol of three Gloster Gladiators.
He only ever held one round of ammo during the War.
I take my hat off to him. Another true Celt. That is only half the story .He was involved in another Task. Roderick
.