Today, the charity continues to provide immediate practical support to all ex-servicemen and women who seek its help – regardless of age, length of service or circumstance.
Below are two case studies – from 1937 (EFC archives) and 2012 respectively. These two stories illustrate how individuals ended up in crisis through no fault of their own – then, as now, the factors that led them into seeking help are identified as economic climate, unemployment and poverty.
Embankment Fellowship Centre, ‘One of many’, 1937
Henry was born in 1873. At school he was a bright lad, with special aptitude for figures. At fifteen he left the elementary school to enter the office of a well-known firm. After a short time he was put into the Accountant’s Department. He married. The war came. His only son enlisted in 1915, a mere boy. He won a Commission, and was killed in the German advance in 1918. Henry himself came through unscathed, returned to his old employment, and was eventually promoted to be Chief Accountant. He invested his savings in the company, and the future, apart from the loss of his only son, looked rosy.
Then, in 1931, CRASH! The firm failed, the job and the savings of a lifetime went. After forty-three years. At the age of fifty-eight. The demand for qualified accountants was negligible. Even firms that had vacancies would not consider a man nearing sixty.
So a tragic struggle began. Two years later Henry’s wife died. At sixty, with no wife, no son, no job, life seemed hardly worth struggling on with. But Henry was no craven. He took a job that was offered, on a farm. But the toil was too hard. In 1935 he applied to the Embankment Fellowship Centre, destitute, almost in despair.
In a few weeks he was a new man. Soon after he was fit again. He trained as a cook, six months after he entered our doors he went out again into employment as a cook-houseman to a man who is now his friend, as well as employer. Henry has a comfortable home, a job, and a good friend who blesses the day he applied to us for a servant.
That story could, with variations, be multiplied a hundred fold. The unemployed journalist who came to us and told us after that we had not given him charity, but a chance, trained as a cook, went out to a house job, and was later made tutor to the son of the house. At sixty-two. The Commercial Traveller who had lost his job through nervous breakdown, followed by six months in hospital, who after five months in the Centre, was helped to a job at his old occupation, and is now representing his firm in a large area in the North of England.
And others. But space does not permit further details of lives which emphasise the tragedy, undeserved and heartrending, that your support has helped to prevent, and which we trust you will feel worthy of helping in the future as in the past.
Veterans Aid, ‘Art of Survival’ exhibition, 2012
Gordon, born in 1950, joined the Royal Engineers where he trained as a cartographer and served in Germany, Cyprus and the UK.
After leaving the Army he found it difficult to settle down and worked freelance for several map companies and civil engineering concerns.
After two years in Baghdad, as a senior cartographic technician on the Baghdad Metro Project, he spent a year in Libya as a contract employee for a Libyan Railways. Gordon then moved to France. He opened a chamber d’hôte in Normandy and started running D-day beach tours for the guests.
In 2006 he moved to Spain where bought a bar and restaurant but sadly got hit by the worldwide recession and finished up losing everything. He recalls “The British Legion in Malaga put me in touch with Veterans Aid and they gave me a place in their hostel in East London. I can honestly say I think they saved my life. When they found out that I enjoyed the calming effect that I got from painting they provided me with materials which have eventually led to this exhibition.”
When he was ready to move on Veterans Aid helped Gordon secure a flat in Rochester where he has sold several paintings and photographs in the local galleries.
