Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Is that Boer War Sword Still There?
Immediately prior to the birth of Annie, my Aunt Edith C. sent me a cassette tape containing her reminiscences about growing up in Liverpool. There's lots of interesting stories about my father, my grandfather and grandmother, and tantalizing info about my great-grandparents. Am listening to it again, this time with the intent of trying to think of pertinent questions to ask her. There are great stories about my father as a young lad, such as how he was a wizard with Mechano, and how he once built a device designed to give a rude shock to my great Aunt when she opened the door to his room. There's also the wartime stories, such as the bombings that devastated Liverpool, an important port city at the time. My Aunt used to deliver newspapers, and she can remember a day when she delivered a paper to a stunned looking neighbour, best known for being rather snooty, who was dressed only in her nightgown, standing in front the shell of her bombed-out house. My Aunt gave her the morning paper, and moved on. Surreal, but as she said, "what else could I do?"

Or the time my father was stationed at a "dummy" airfield, set up to deliberately draw German bombers to where an airfield wasn't. Problem was, he ended up at the recieving end of a lot of bomb runs, and they had to douse the fires of their fake runway lights quickly in order to survive. My Aunt remembers a story my father told her of one such incident, where he and a friend used their military-issue greatcoats to put out the fires. His friend got a medal, while my father got fined for ruining his greatcoat. Like my Aunt said at the conclusion of that story: "there's no justice in this life".

Am determined to make a trip to Liverpool, to track down the gravesites of the relatives on my father's side, and to try to see what I could of the rest of the city important to my father, thankfully all marked out for me on a map of the city that came with the casette tape. I would also like to find out more about my grand-mother's side of the family, who had the name Langes and originated from Kiel, Germany (then, in Prussia). Know next to nothing about them, not even names other than that of my grand-mother.

Another story is that, for whatever reason, my father stashed away a Boer War-era sword and rifle under the floorboards of his bedroom in their old house prior to their move to new digs. Wonder if they are still there? ;-)