Family memories with Fay Hampson...

As well as bringing up four children and running a thriving bakery business on Charles Street, Wrexham, for many decades until they sold it circa 1949/50, my grandparents Mary and Herbert Hampson always played an active role in what is called nowadays the community.

In Grandma’s case her main commitment was to the British Red Cross.

The monochrome photos were taken in 1940. Her son-in-law, Doug Stokes, was already a prisoner of war. Her younger son Jeff would be shot down in 1943, missing for weeks and was a PoW until the end of the war.

One of her brothers had been killed at Mametz Wood in the First World War and another severely gassed as was her brother-in-law.

She must have been full of trepidation when these photos were taken.

The colour photograph shows her on duty in her red uniform at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod in 1959.

The British Red Cross was formed in 1905 with the renaming of the The British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War. It was granted its first Royal Charter in 1908.

However, the origins of the Red Cross movement go back to 1863 and the Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, who was instrumental in setting up the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which still have their headquarters in Geneva.

The trigger for Dunant had been the terrible suffering of thousands of men on both sides in the 1859 Battle of Solferino during the Second Italian War of Independence.

The trigger for Britain was the Franco-Prussian War (July 19, 1870 - May 10, 1871). A public meeting was held in London on August 4, 1870 and as a result of this meeting the The British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War was formed.

Today the British Red Cross does so much more. Their aim to “help anyone anywhere in the UK and around the world get the support they need if crisis strikes”.

They certainly helped me when I needed a wheelchair and commode for my nonagenarian mother during her visits to me!

And if Grandma was alive today she would be there in her smart uniform at local events, helping, comforting and bandaging you up in her expert way.