Quest for the Truth about Family History

Quest for the Truth about my Family History:

Quest for the Truth. How much of the authors’ novels is truth and how much is fiction?

1. My family

1. In the early 1950s, my family resided in Ealing, London, until we made the move to North Yorkshire in 1957. This relocation marked the beginning of my primary school years in Boosbeck, where we faced financial struggles due to my father’s unemployment, leading us to live with my Aunt Bessie.

2. Following my father’s passing in 1990, I delved into researching my family’s background. The British Army Historical Records Office in Glasgow provided me with his army record, a concise A3 paper, along with a letter advising against further inquiries. Subsequently, I turned to books on the British Army in Italy during World War II at the local University library to uncover more about his military past.

1.1: The Need to Know

1. An Australian Army officer once informed me that only spies delve into such matters. I responded by stating that I was simply investigating my father’s army record, a fact that I made clear in no uncertain terms.
2. Following my father’s passing, I had been residing in Australia. During his funeral back in 1990, individuals in formal attire tossed what appeared to be a medal into his grave just before it was filled with soil. This incident fueled my determination to uncover the truth.
3. Despite my efforts to pursue leads, they always seemed to vanish into thin air, leaving me feeling as though I was making no progress whatsoever. The mysterious nature of the situation only added to my frustration and determination to uncover the secrets hidden within my father’s past.

1.2: Memories

1. However, memories flooded back to me regarding conversations my father had with his former army comrades at the British Legion in Englefield Green during the early 1960s, particularly about the General Penney “cover story.” Additionally, I recalled discussions he had with Maria Carra’ in Foligno, Italy after their marriage in 1981. Both my father and Maria were regular attendees at the annual Partisan reunion gatherings in the Foligno region during the 1980s, having fought side by side in the Italian Partisans in Central and Northern Italy during World War II.
2. Upon further investigation, I uncovered that his Commanding Officer, Major General WRC Penney, had previously served as the ex-deputy director of British Military Intelligence. He had a distinguished career in the Royal Corps of Signals in India and China throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Major General Penney held the position of Signals Officer in Chief (Military Intelligence) for the Middle East in 1941, and later became the Head of Allied Intelligence in Italy in 1944. Following the war’s conclusion in 1945, he assumed the role of Director of Military Intelligence at the Headquarters of the Supreme Allied Command South East Asia. After retiring from the Army in 1953, Major General Penney became the inaugural Director of the London Communications Security Agency, an organization dedicated to studying and advising on British cypher security, which eventually transformed into CESG and later GCHQ. He retired from his position as Director of the London Communications Security Agency in 1957, coinciding with our family’s move from Ealing to Boosbeck.
3. I began to wonder why (according to the man in the ‘tightly fitting’ suit), Major General WRC Penney would have asked for my father to be one of his pall bearer’s at his funeral as his dying wish?

1.3: My Time in Italy

1. Accompanied by my Father and Maria, I visited a viaduct close to Spoleto, as depicted in our family photos. During our time there, they recounted a harrowing experience of being trapped by German forces in a cave within the ravine, fearing for their lives. Fortunately, they were eventually rescued by their fellow Partisans.
2. Maria, in addition to my Father, shared with me the story of how they jointly acquired a vineyard with her cousin Luigina Sordini post-war. They revealed that the funds used for this purchase were obtained from gold seized from a German convoy in Northern Italy in 1945. Through our discussions, it became apparent that they had witnessed Mussolini’s execution near Lake Como or had arrived shortly thereafter.
3. Reflecting on these revelations, I pondered the possibility of having a half-sister residing in or around Foligno. However, my attempts to verify details about my father’s military service in Italy during World War II were met with a surprising response from a representative at the Australian War Museum. According to them, the British regiment my father was in was not present in Italy during that time, as confirmed by the official British war records in their possession. This revelation cast a shadow of doubt over the authenticity of my father’s wartime records in Italy as presented by the British Army Historical Records Office in Glasgow. I asked myself “were they hiding something”?

2: My Story

1. In 1972 – 1975, I attended Durham University and graduated with a first class honours degree. Following that, I pursued a PhD at a university in Birmingham, conducting field work in Antarctica for two summer seasons to study metalliferous mineralization under the Natural Environment Research Council. I successfully completed my PhD in Birmingham in 1978, and my thesis, “The Metalliferous Mineralization in the Western Antarctic Peninsula,” is available at the British Lending Library.
2. After the completion of my PhD, I experienced the loss of my mother. Shortly after, I, along with my Aunty Lorena, Uncle Sid, and my father, visited Aunty Renee in Chopwell, as depicted in the family photos. The memories of that visit, captured in “The Devil can be kind to some people,” remain vivid in my mind, with discussions and images from that day etched into my subconscious. Notably, the photograph of Aunty Lana caught my attention, as did the image of people on a hill overlooking a river where a steel cable at a mine had collapsed, a location Aunty Renee mentioned was in Russia, and began with a Ke or Ku.

2.1: Russia

During my visit to Kemerovo in Siberia, forty years later, everything started to make sense. As I listened to the guide at the Mining Museum, it felt as if a Pandora’s box had been opened in my mind, bringing back all the memories of what Aunt Renee had told me in Chopwell that day. To my surprise, the same photograph that she had described was hanging on the museum wall, solidifying the connection. Determined to find evidence of my family’s journey to Russia in 1918 and 1929, I turned to the records of the Chopwell Miner’s Lodge. Unfortunately, these records had mysteriously vanished, leaving me with no tangible proof. However, my quest took an unexpected turn when I reached out to the BBC Tyne and Wear radio station. They provided me with a link to a BBC series called “Watching the Russians,” and in an episode titled “Chopwell,” Stella Rimmington, the former head of MI5, revealed the existence of a Soviet Spy Ring in Chopwell during the Cold War. This revelation added a whole new layer of intrigue to my search.

2.2: My Ancestors Again!

It is intriguing to ponder over the circumstances surrounding my grandfather’s employment as the Security Officer at Royal Holloway College in London during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. This curiosity arises from the fact that he is mentioned in the “Chopwell Blacklist A,” a compilation of miners deemed undesirable by the Chopwell mining company in 1926, due to his affiliation with the Communist Party and his charges under the “Emergency Powers Act.” The stark contrast between his denied employment as a miner and his subsequent role as a Security Officer at a prestigious institution raises questions about the factors that led to this unexpected career path.

2.3: The Novels

1. The account of the “Room that never was” at Boosbeck railway station in “The Girl from Posolskoe” is indeed factual, as evidenced by family photos. However, upon the publication of “The Devil can be kind to some people,” a series of peculiar events unfolded, such as the deletion of my father’s army record from the Army historical records office, making it untraceable on platforms like ancestry.com or online army records, despite photographic evidence of his presence in Italy during World War II.
2. Delving further into my family history, I uncovered details about an ancestor who perished in Chopwell pit in 1921, which were corroborated by the Durham Miners Union website in 2010, only to mysteriously vanish from the records. Fortunately, a duplicate of the information was later located at the Durham County Records Office online, shedding light on the individual’s tragic fate as an engineplaneman.
3. Following a trip to Russia in 2011, correspondence with the Mining Museum in Kemerovo yielded insights into English miners who journeyed to Kemerovo in 1929. However, after the publication of my book, the emails containing this valuable information vanished from my computer and email account, along with the army records provided by the Army Historical Records office. Despite the publication of my book, the disappearance of these public records remains a perplexing enigma.
4.   https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Attraction_Review-g811326-d2615310-Reviews-Krasnaya_Gorka_Museum_Preserve-Kemerovo_Kemerovo_Oblast_Siberian_District.html

2.4: The Dawning.

Through my exploration of my family’s background, I have come to realize that the information available on public websites is carefully curated by the Government to ensure only certain details are disclosed. Any potentially embarrassing revelations are swiftly removed from public knowledge. For instance, in Australia, laws have been enacted to grant “security services” the authority to unlawfully enter a law-abiding individual’s residence, confiscate any materials they desire, all without judicial oversight. This highlights the reality that we reside in a system resembling an oligarchy rather than a true democracy.

Just a couple of final points

DNA testing can fill in the final clues. I have Russian genes in me from the Crimea, Black Sea and Caucasus Mountains Region. I worked on the logical assumption that you get fifty percent of your genes from each parent and therefore an ancestor four or five generations ago must have married a Russia woman from the Black Sea Region.

In Conclusion

My family ancestors were miners or militia in the Durham Light Infantry and had short lives and reproduced early. Working on an average generation gap of twenty years took me back to 1840 to 1860 when an ancestor must have been in the Black Sea region. In 1854 to 1856 the British fought a war with Russia in the Crimea and Caucasus region in the Black Sea Area. And one of the regiments that fought in Crimea at the Battle of Alma and Sevastopol was? You’ve guessed – the Durham Light Infantry.

This finding put a new light on the “Communist” miners who went to Russia in 1918 and 1929. They were not simply Communists fighting for a cause. They were second and third generation Russians returning to their maternal homeland to help Russia. That’s probably why the British establishment persecuted them and their descendants, including me.

In 2017 I received a letter from the Vice Chancellor of Durham University University, informing me about his ‘views’ of my work. However, his remarks put me in mind of an old Chinese proverb: “The man who comes to lay down the law about right and wrong, is usually the wrongdoer himself.”

In January 2018, the Author renounced his British Citizenship. https://www.lytlefeara.org//communications-and-letters/

The dreams and visions I have related in the book are all exactly as they happened, they are true in detail.  As is the car ride through Vladivostok in particular. Our lives are predetermined. Your conscious mind believes you have free will. Your subconscious knows a priori that you do not.

“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” 

Marcus Aurelius

To see the documents that demonstrate my commitment to finding the truth, please click the link below: https://www.lytlefeara.org//communications-and-letters/

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who reads my books and believes they may know what had happened to me. Please refer to my blog.

Gate’ ,Gate’, Paragate’, Parasamgate’, Bodhi, Svaha.