The 1914-18 War

[Petrushka]

With war veterans of any conflict, they do not ever talk about their experiences I find,

I've found this as well. One family friend, now deceased, was a paratrooper who landed at Arnhem and was immediately taken prisoner. There must have been a good book in his story but he wouldn't talk about it. Another friend of my father's fought at Dunkirk and he wouldn't talk about it either.

One big regret I do have is that I never asked a former director at a former employer who was imprisoned in Colditz during the Second World War about his experiences. In those days (mid 1970s) you didn't dare ask your directors such questions but I do so wish that I had.

My paternal grandfather was too old for WW1 (born in 1863) while my maternal grandfather was too young (born in 1902) for WW and too old for WW2, though he was an ARP Warden. Our family didn't have any 1914-18 casualties so far as I am aware but my mother's cousin fell at the Battle of Anzio in 1944.

[richardfinegold]

My father had polio as a child, so he spent WWII working in an airplane assembly factory in Detroit.
My father in law was an Airforce Navigator in the Pacific. He only recently began talking about his experiences. In turns out that he and his neighbor across the street, with whom he has been well acquainted for the last 40 years, were both stationed on Tinian, but owing to their mutual taciturn qualities, only recently they were there at the same time.
My wife just discovered recently that their plane was hit by flak and the pilot killed on their maiden voyage. They had to make an emergency landing at Iwo Jima and took sniper fire as they landed.

[Pabmusic]

With war veterans of any conflict, they do not ever talk about their experiences I find. The horror of what they saw, was too much for them to talk about. My father does not talk about what he did in WW2, so there is a point there?…

My father was in the navy (WW2 of course) but not on a ship. This was a bit of a problem for me as an 11-year-old at a new (boys') school in 1964, where "What did your dad do in the war?" was one of the first questions anyone asked. Even one master, having introduced himself, got us all to say what our dads did "in the war". I have to admit that I was a little ashamed to say "He was in the navy, attached to Combined Operations and stationed near Troon. He went to France on D Day for several months, and was practising to go to the Far East when VJ Day happened". It seemed tame compared with the other boys' tales, but Dad didn't ever say much about the war.

The things I can recall him telling me amount to not much more than:

(1) His unit had to set up the initial 'permanent' radio link with Britain on D Day
(2) They did most of their training in the Scottish Highlands, though some was at Gourock
(3) The 'land ship' he served at was HMS Dundonald II at Troon
(4) Dad was injured jumping from a castle into a tree (or something like that) during training
(5) When you stick a bayonet in someone, you twist it before pulling it out (this was said very disapprovingly)
(6) When you stab someone…(another graphic description, again very disapproving in tone)
(7) He knew and demonstrated some unarmed combat moves
(8) He had a pistol during the war but never fired it
(9) Although he had naval uniform (I've seen pictures) he usually wore battledress (I haven't seen pictures)
(10) Although he was an anti-monarchist, Dad had time for Earl Mountbatten, who had been his overall C-in-C and whose man-management skills were apparently good
(12) He and a friend volunteered for a night-time job that involved taking apart some German radio equipment on the French coast.
(13) As a result of 10, he and his friend were told they'd be recommended for medals (this would have been the DSC since Dad was a Lieutenant) but in the event the unit's Commanding Officer was decorated "on behalf of the unit"
(14) This so rankled that Dad never collected any medals that were due him, and he was always very cynical about such things
(15) He would never let his son have a toy gun of any sort (so his son used to make them of wood)

These snippets leaked out in dribs and drabs over perhaps 30 years and were never listed as above, so perhaps I can be forgiven for not quite catching on - but even I can recall thinking it odd that a sailor knew about bayonets, stabbing people and unarmed combat - or that his naval training had involved jumping from a tree on to a castle wall. But I never thought much about it (my head is always full of so many things that some have to be jettisoned). I just accepted these as interesting occasional facts.

It was only when I was about 50 (Dad having died some 10 years earlier) that I was present at yet another family funeral when Dad's youngest brother said to my cousin, "You know Phillip's father was a commando in the war?" My jaw nearly hit the floor as (almost instantly) all those things came together. My Mum insists that she had no idea, either.

Sometimes I feel I'd like to relive that day at 11 when our master asked us what our fathers did in the war. But then I realise how Dad would have hated the glorifying of something that seems to have so affected the rest of his life that he could never talk to anyone about it, not even to his wife.

[marthe]

Interesting thread. WWI was always more present in our family because of my paternal grandmother's stories of her experiences in Brussels between 1914-1918. My father's war, WWII, was spent in the labs of Columbia University in NYC where he was one of many civilian war workers who were part of the Manhattan Project. He never talked much about that time other than to say that everything was top secret and hush hush...untll the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He felt guilty about being part of this but never talked about his feelings.

His father, my grandfather, was an artillery officer in the Belgian army stationed near the "trenches of death" at Dixsmuide on the Yser River between 1914-1917. Later he was posted to Rome as a military attache. In Dixsmuide, his unit made maps from aerial photographs.This involved going up in balloons, unsupported by defending aircraft or artillery, to photograph the terrain. It was quite dangerous as they were sitting ducks up in the air. Bon Papa never talked about his war experiences.

My paternal grandmother, who spent the war in Brussels with her young children, was actually arrested and imprisoned by the Germans on suspicion of passing information. She was put on trial and acquitted. Had she been shot, I wouldn't be typing this. This happened two years after the execution of Edith Cavell whom my grandmother had known. My father was born in August 1919...nine months after the Armistice.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

By great uncle Thomas in his WWI uniform. The war ended before he experienced the horrors of the front line.

[Nick Armstrong]

A hundred years ago, the "War to end all wars" was started.

Do you have any mementos from your grandparents (or great grandparents) part in that conflict?

Yes - I have "The Soldier's Bible" belonging to my great uncle Fred, looking like this



inscribed inside, in royal blue ink and touchingly youthful script, with his name and date and a "B.E.F" number and the word "France"... Fred was only 20 in 1918 so one can only imagine what was going on out there in the teenage mind of this lad from rural West Yorkshire, as he leafed through its pages - in which is a piece of flimsy light tinfoil which looks to me like the inside wrapper from a bar of chocolate.

I knew him in the 60s and 70s as a ribicund and kindly old gent living with his wife in a freezing great house in Dewsbury (every door had a thick velvet curtain hung on the back to try and keep out the draughts - not very successfully) amid lots of huntin' paraphernalia, riding crops, saddles etc. plus a rather exciting pair of old flintlock pistols. Liked riding to hounds, did Fred!

A precious thing, that little bible.

[HighlandDougie]

Having known that the eldest of my father's siblings was killed in WW1 but knowing no more about it (and having never asked my father before he died), I decided last year to try and find out some more. Through the online wonders of Registers of Scotland and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, I discovered that my Uncle James was 18 when, shortly after landing in France with the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders, he was killed in July 1918 in the early days of the Second Battle of the Marne.

As I felt sure that no-one in my father's family had ever visited the grave (they were of the generation of Scots which simply didn't go abroad, other than to fight in wars or try their luck somewhere in the British Empire), I set off last year to find the grave, which turned out to be in a small cemetery (Marfaux) between Reims and Épernay. It is an idyllic spot, set in rolling countryside with oak woods, a river and fields of wheat. The fields were full of poppies and cornflowers and, movingly, there were skylarks singing their hearts out. While it was difficult to imagine the horrors which my uncle would have met there almost 100 years ago and which he would experience for all too short a time, I did feel happy that he was at peace in such a lovely place. The CWGC does a great job in maintaining its sites (Marfaux was immaculately kept).

I also visited 'Les Fantômes' which is a monument sculpted by Paul Landowski on the Butte Chalmont near Oulchy-le-Château, south of Soissons, which is a memorial to all those who fell in the Marne. Again, impossible to imagine it as the centre of a raging battle, surrounded by fields of ripening wheat, again full of poppies.

More generally, Christopher Clark's 'The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914' is the best book I've read on how the madness of WW1 came about.

[Richard Tarleton]

My paternal grandfather with his proud mother. Unbeknownst to eachother both grandfathers were in the Royal Artillery. This one survived unscathed, though he never spoke about it. The other was gassed, and suffered poor health for the rest of his life . He kept a scrapbook during the war: sadly, when he died, my mother's mother threw it on the fire.



My family history researches have turned up another family member (a first cousin of my great grandmother, above) who leaps straight from the pages of John Buchan. From working in the Stock Exchange in the 1890s he volunteered for the Boer War and joined the City Imperial Volunteers Mounted Infantry. He co-wrote a fascinating account of this unit’s role in that war, “The Record of the Mounted Infantry of the City Imperial Volunteers” (which I have a copy of), from recruitment and basic training and the voyage out to South Africa and the campaign itself. He was the Colour Sergeant. The war was well under way, and Ladysmith besieged, before they arrived, and they took part in 42 separate actions.

After the Boer War he emigrated to Canada where he became a Canadian citizen. He volunteered at the start of the First World War, enlisting in Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. His civilian occupation is listed as "Prospector, fur trapper" on his 1914 enlistment papers, and he is recorded as having a tiger’s head tattooed on his right forearm. He served in the trenches and was decorated with the DCM for rescuing his unit’s horses and other equipment from burning stables that had been hit by German shellfire, the citation recording that he returned four times to the burning building.

In July 1918 he transferred to the Canadian Expeditionary Force, a special unit of about 4,000 Canadian soldiers who went to Siberia to help the White Russians in their campaign against the new Bolshevik government and Red Army. He returned from Vladivistok to Vancouver in 1919, by now a Lieutenant Colonel.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1923, where he became a naturalised American and ( ) a motion picture actor. He had a minor part in the 1930 Warner Bros musical Sweet Kitty Bellairs - I have his contract and a DVD of the film. He died in Los Angeles in 1937 aged 64, and was buried with full military honours in the British veterans’ plot in the cemetery.

[Suffolkcoastal]

On my father's side (Scottish) I don't think any of my close relatives fought, they were I believe all involved in either agriculture or mining so remained in their areas of work as these were important industries to the war effort. On my Mum's side one of my Great, Great Uncles (Grandmother's side) was killed but not sure where, my Great Grandfather (1876-1968, Grandfather's side) who I can faintly remember as I was 4 when he died, was at Salonika and on the Bulgarian front. I'm sure my Grandparents had a card or something from 1917 but I haven't seen it for many years.

[LeMartinPecheur]

On my Mum's side one of my Great, Great Uncles (Grandmother's side) was killed but not sure where...

Sc: if you want to know you might get a clue from the UK war graves website. I showed it to my father just before he died and he was very moved (I think; a pretty undemonstrative man my dad...) to look up regimental pals who'd been killed in Burma. IIRC he found all of them.

You can also access very brief regimental records online. If you know that and a date of death, the standard regimental histories should track the place down.