BBC Blog Network

User Profile

Adelheide_T

Listed below are comments made by Adelheide_T between Tuesday, 4th November 2008 and Tuesday, 4th November 2008.

«Newer
Older»

What did your relatives do in World War One? 2:25pm on 04 Nov 2008 My father's uncle was conscripted and died in France in September 1217. The family said that he had been 'murdered by Lloyd George'. My father's father, however, avoided conscription because he was in an essential industry -- he was a goods train guard on the North Eastern Railway. He was 'only' relocated from north east England to Liverpool, working for the hated London and North Western Railway. Yet Liverpool wasn't so bad, because there he met his future wife, my father's mother.
On my mother's side, her father had just passed his matriculation exams for university entrance when the First World War broke out; he joined up immediately. His unit was sent out to the Khyber Pass, where he was given the job of wireless operator on the grounds that he had an education and so could be trusted with complex equipment. He told his grandchildren very little about his time there, except for describing long marches when they used to throw away tins of food which were too heavy to carry ('While we were starving in England' remarked my grandmother sourly) and telling of the bloodthirsty warfare between the local tribesmen. He returned from the war physically well, but my grandmother said that his personality changed, so that he suffered from mood swings and was no longer the happy-go-lucky young man who had gone out to war.

«Newer
Older»

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites