Was your Grandad in the First World War?

[Bartswife]

My grandad died when I was very young, only just remember sitting on his lap and his moustache tickling me when I kissed him. I was never told much about his past only he worked at the local gas works! My dad was called up just three months after marrying mum in the Second World War, he was a boot repairer and says he did a lot of that during his time in the Staffordshire regiment, he wouldn’t talk much about that time even when I asked him. Like a lot of other people who had to serve maybe they wanted to forget. I did request his medals and he gave them to me. He went over the day after D Day and somehow ended up in Germany but he never told me what he did over there and how long it was before he got home.

[disney_l81]

My great great grandfather was- he died in France in 1917 (lance corporal in the kings own Yorkshire light infantry) and his name is on the Thiepval Memorial which I would love go visit one day.

[2point]

One of them was. He served as a gunner, Ypres. He woke up in Shrewsbury hospital aged 19 missing one of his legs. When he recovered he became a coal miner, the coal face was less than 2ft high so could mine on his side and didn't need his leg.

[quartergill]

My grandfather was in the Royal Scots and fought in four of the major battles of WW1, including Arras, Ypres and the Somme. My Dad, who was in the RAF in WW2, remembers as a young boy my Grandfather having nightmares, screaming during night, as he remembered his time in the trenches.

[BevS97]

My grandad was in WWII. I actually think he served just after the war had ended.

[jenn8400]

Yes he served in the RAF and was stationed in Egypt. We recently found a old suitcase full of love letters, art and souvenirs he sent home.

[stanleycamel]

Two great uncles 21 and 17 killed at the Somme 1916.

An Uncle 23, a Lancaster pilot, KIA in March 1944 buried in the Netherlands - the youngest of his crew was only 18.


High Flight - John MGillespie Magee’

"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, –and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."



My dad 18 was in the first wave of the British Army crossing the Rhine into Germany on 23rd March 1945 as part of Operation Plunder.

Lest we forget

[kateh134]

My maternal grandfather was in WW1 and my paternal grandfather was in WW2. I’m researching my family at the moment but haven’t got round to their war records yet. Neither spoke of their experiences so I’m reliant on being able to trace them via their records.

[mick]

IF I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.

Rupert Brooke - who was born and went to school about a mile away

Lions led by donkeys

[shona]

My grandfather got the military medal for capturing 7 German soldiers. He never talked about it. We only found out the details after my parents died and there was a newspaper cutting and a letter inviting him to a presentation of a gold engraved pocket watch giving him freedom of the village.