Thomas William Chisholm

Thomas William Chisholm is my grandfather, he died in 1979 and his Diary as a POW was passed to me recently. I am his Grandson Mike Orchard, it was I who transcribed, researched and compiled both the ebook and paperback of his Diary which now exists. My Grandfather had always hoped that one day his Diary would be published. He had tried in 1933, 1934, and again in 1964 to get some newspapers interested in publishing extracts from it but failed. I have the letters of rejection from editors. Having read the Diary for the first time early in 2018, I decided that it they should be seen by people. I began by posting the odd entry on my Facebook page and was very quickly taken by their popularity, so much so that I created a Facebook page for him under his name, which proved very popular. A local newspaper reported Simon Meechan asked if he could use a couple of extract and wrote a two page spread in the Evening Chronicle in November 2018, and then again at Christmas 2018. In view of its popularity with many people, many of whom had asked me to put it into a book, I decided that it at all possible it should be done. His dream of it being published was fulfilled 100 years after the events he wrote about. He would have been so thrilled to have seen this happen.

I researched the many POW camps, and route he had taken as a POW, and as much of his war record as I could, whilst I was transcribing his Diary, and then set about self publishing it. The Kindle version appeared first, and then the paperback published 6th February 2019, which is coincidentally almost 100 year to the day he arrived back in England after WW1. This brings us to the present time and to use his last words in his Diary "and what?"

The profile photographs you see are one of my Grandfather with my son, who also became a Fusilier later in his life, and one of myself at a performance in a local folk club.