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World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment
Pte. Thomas Mansell
British Army 8th Btn. East Yorkshire Regiment
from:Patrington, Hull
(d.13th Nov 1916)
Pte. A. Mansfield
British Army 24th (Tyneside Irish) Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers
from:Whickham
A Mansfield was wounded in August 1916
Pte. Arthur Mansfield
British Army 15th Btn. Sherwood Foresters
(d.23rd July 1916)
Arthur Mansfield died from wounds sustained on 23rd of July 1916.
Pte. Harry Mansfield
British Army 1st Coy Machine Gun Corps
from:Barley
(d.17th Apr 1918)
Harry Mansfield enlisted in Hitchin as a private in the Bedfordshire Regiment. He was seconded to the 1st Company Infantry Machine Gun Corps, died aged 20 of wounds received during the German Spring Offensive, 17th April 1918, probably at Mount Kemmel, during the Battle of the Lys. He is buried at Lille Southern Cemetery.
Sgt. Henry James Mansfield
British Army 9th Btn. West Yorkshire Regiment
from:Burton on Trent
(d.30th September 1916)
A/Sgt. James Michael Mansfield
British Army 1st Btn. Monmouthshire Regiment
from:Newport, Mon.
(d.8th Oct 1918)
James Mansfield died age 20 and is buried in Guizancourt Farm Cemetery, Gouy.
Pte. R. N. Mansfield
British Army 110th Seige Bty. Royal Garrison Artillery
(d.1st April 1918)
Private Mansfield was the son of Stafford and Annie Kate Mansfield of Queniborough, Syston, Leicestershire. He was 23 when he died at 29 Casualty Clearing Station, Gezaincourt on 1st April 1918. He is buried in Gezaincourt Communal Cemetery Extension, Grave II.H.15.
L/Cpl. William James Mansfield
British Army 11th Btn. Essex Regiment
from:Smith End, Barley
(d.21st Mar 1918)
William James Mansfield from Smith End in Barley, enlisted at West Ham in Essex. A Lance Corporal in the 11th Battalion The Essex Regiment, he was killed in action during the German final offensive at the Battle of St Quentin 21st March 1918 (British losses at this battle were 177,739. The Germans lost 348,300) He is buried in Vaux Hill Cemetery.
Pte. Horace Manson
British Army 18th Btn. Durham Light Infantry
Commissioned and continued to serve after the war
Pte. John Manson
British Army 8th Btn. Seaforth Highlanders
from:Wick
(d.20th April 1918)
John Manson is buried in France at the St. Venant-Robecq British Cemetery.
Pte. Magnus Manson
British Army 1st Battalion Gordon Highlanders
from:Jarrow
(d.18th Aug 1916)
Magnus Manson served with the 1st Battalion Gordon Highlanders. He was aged 23 when died on 18th August 1916. Born in Jarrow in 1893, he enlisted in Edinburgh.
He is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial.
Pte. Peter Manson
British Army 2nd Btn. Cameronians (Scottish Rifles)
from:Airdrie
(d.5th Dec 1915)
Peter Manson was killed in action on the 5th of December 1915, aged 21 and is buried the Estaires Communal Cemetery in France. He was the son of Mrs. R. Manson, of 21, Craig St, Airdrie.
Pte. Alfred Lewis Mantle
British Army 1/20th Btn. London Regiment
from:74, Sandling Rd., Maidstone.
(d.7th July 1917)
Pte. Albert Joseph Manton
British Army Loyal North Lancs
Pte. Harry Manton
British Army 1st Battalion Suffolk Regiment
In June 2013 I purchased a pocket watch & scratched into the back was:- H Manton 1st Suffolks 1918 Prisoner of war Germany 1915-1919.
From the records office in Bury St Edunds I have obtained a copy of his WW1 medal rolls index card.From the Suffolk Regiment Gazette of 1916 the following was obtained: Army number 7905, Name Manton H, Unit 1st, Camp Giessen, As the watch was purchased in Diss which is on the Norfolk Suffolk it would appear that he did not stray far after the war. I would love to know more.
L/Cpl. William Frederick Manton
British Army 12th Btn. Middlesex Regiment
from:Peckham
(d.14th Jul 1916 )
William Frederick Manton was born in 1882 in Deptford. His father was a Painter by trade and some years later the family moved to Peckham, Camberwell. On August 7th 1904 William married Mary Ann Blackman and they had five children. The eldest was my grandfather William Francis Manton.
The 1911 census shows that William Frederick was working as a Wireman for the London County Council Tramways.
When war was declared William Frederick answered Lord Kitchener's call and enlisted into the 12th Battalion Middlesex Regimentas a Private. He did his basic training at Colchester and on August 24th 1915 he embarked from Folkestone to France. On 31st of May he was appointed Lance Corporal.
On the 14th of July 1916 he took part in the capture of Trônes Wood. Just after midnight the 54th Brigade began to assemble for another attack on the wood. The two nearest battalions were ordered forward with the commander of the 12th Battalion Lieutenant Colonel F.A Maxwell put in charge of the attack. At 4.30 am an hour after the main attack the Battle of Bazentin Ridge had begun. There were eight British attacks on Trônes Wood and the first seven failed because of machine-gun fire from the strong points along the railway through the wood which were not captured until their positions became known.
William Frederick Manton was killed in action on this day, and he has no known grave. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial.
Pte. John Steven "Monty" Mantova
British Army 12th Btn. Manchester Regiment
from:Manchester
My grandfather John Stephen Mantova was half Italian. He was a private with the 12th Btn Manchester Regiment from 1914. He served in many places including the Somme. We know little about his war-time story as he didn´t like to talk about it. His number was 4343, but he was sent home on several occasions with wounds to his arms, legs, chest and back. Some of these were massive holes that a cloth could be put through to clean the wounds.
Eventually in 1915/16 he was transferred as unfit for active duty to the Royal Engineers, working out in Mesopotamia (Iraq) helping build new roads, probably using prisoners or war and deserters. His number there was 251026.
Before the war he trained as a stone mason, but when he returned home and was demobbed in 1919, he was unable to carry out his trade as he could no longer lift or use the tools. From 1919 until 1960 he gave 41 years of faithful service to the City Corporation of Liverpool as a tram conductor, for the last three years as a bus conductor when the City scrapped its trams the last one going out of service in 1957. He was awarded the British War Medal, the Victory Medal and the 1914/15 Star, but these later were stolen. He died in October 1980.
Pte Sidney Harold Manuel
British Army 10th Btn Rifle Brigade
Pte. Henry Manville
British Army 2nd Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment
from:Uckfield
(d.20th Nov 1914)
Henry Manville died of wounds in France & Flanders on the 20th November 1914, aged 35. He was born in Burgess Hill, Sussex, the son of John and Elizabeth Manville of Coxe's Cottages, Plumpton, Sussex and enlisted at Uckfield, Sussex. Henry is buried in Hazebrouck Communal Cemetery, France in Plot III. Row A. Grave 25. He is commemorated on the War Memorial at All Saints' Churchyard, Plumpton and on the Roll of Honour inside All Saints' Church where he shown as enlisting in The Royal Sussex Regiment in 1914. However he first enlisted in the RGA before transferring to The Royal Sussex Regiment. Henry was my Grandfather's older brother and was the only one to not return from the Great War out of all his brothers who enlisted including my Grandfather.
Fitter. William Alfred Gorbutt Mapplethorpe
British Army 114 Battery Royal Field Artillery
from:Lincoln
(d.21st Mar 1918)
Pte. William Mappley
British Army 18th Battalion Middlesex Regement
(d.26th Sept 1918)
Pte. William "Gragga" Mara
British Army 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Regiment
from:Kilmaganny, Co Kilkenny, Ireland.
William Mara served with the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Regiment, he died in March 1955.
Pte. K. C. Marais
South African Forces Cradock Commando Mounted Commandos
(d.21st December 1914)
Private Marais is buried in the Schuitdrift Farm Burial Ground, Pofadder, Northern Cape, South Africa.
Gnr. Clement Albert March
British Army 197 Siege Battery Royal Garrison Artillery
from:Woolwich
My granddad, Clement March, came home from WW1 and died in 1964. Before the war he worked at the Woolwich Arsenal making munitions. His family came from the Gloucester area to work in the Woolwich Arsenal, as did his wife's family.
After the war, he went back to the Arsenal but had a fall on cherries in the market square outside the Arsenal main gate. He broke his hip or leg and it wasn't put right. He had a big built-up boot and a bad limp. He could no longer work in munitions and cleaned the toilets instead. He then took up shoe mending, shoe making, and making cricket balls. He did this through the 1950s and 1960s. I remember his shed and the sheets of leather for the soles. My nan (also in the photo) mended shoes. They lived in Plumstead all their married life and were married over 50 years. They had two girls - my mum (who also worked in munitions in WW2). My dad was also in the Royal Artillery in WW2. I have great memories of granddad. I was born in 1950. He let me get away with so much, I remember him repairing shoes so much I used to do my own. He did say he went to Italy and brought back two lovely brooches made of tiny, tiny stones in patterns/flowers, and a pretty silk hankie. I asked his daughter (my aunt) if he ever spoke of the war, but no he didn't. But I now know what he must have seen and went through. I do remember he had a great respect for horses that came on deliveries to the door and he always had a look and a pat or a carrot.
L/Cpl Edward Arthur March
British Army 4th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment
from:Wetherby
(d.12th Apr 1918)
Pte. John Arthur March
British Army 1/6th Btn. Durham Light Infantry
from:Leicester
John Arthur March was my Great Grandfather. He passed away in 1987, when I was 4 years old and because of this I don't remember him, but I'm always interested in hearing about him.
Jack joined the Army on the 5th January 1916 at the Glen Parva Recruitment Office in Leicester. On the 12th February 1916 he enlisted in the Durham Light Infantry and was sent to France and fought, as you might expect, in the Trenches. Because of his time in the Trenches he developed Trench Feet. It became seriously infected and it required him to be sent to the Graylingwell War Hospital in Chichester, England for 8 days. He was admitted on the 24th April 1917 and discharged on the 2nd May 1917. After that period he was then transferred to the Convalescent Hospital in Eastbourne, England and stayed there for 48 days. He was admitted on the 2nd May 1917 and was discharged on the 19th June 1917 and was then deemed reasonably fit to return active service, but had to stay in England. In total he spent 1 year, 7 months in France and 1 year 6 months in England as, but was also transferred to the Northumberland Fusiliers at some point during the War. I'm trying to gather as much information about his time in the Northumberland Fusiliers as I can but it's proving to be tough to find out anything about it. During his time in the Trenches he would get bored at times and end up shooting the rats which may sound funny but this ended with him getting into trouble and he was called up on a Disciplinary, but he got off lightly and was cautioned. Whether he continued his assault on the rats I don't know.
John March (Benfield) and his son John Arthur March. John Arthur March c1916 just before he was sent to France with the Durham Light Infantry & John March just before he was to join the National Reserves in England
On the 4th April 1919, after the end of the War, he wasn't formally discharged. Instead he was transferred to the Royal Defence Corps as he was deemed too physically unfit to be able to be on the front line. Which I believe was due to developing Trench Foot. So, he survived the War and was able to return to his family and friends. Which I am extremely pleased about as it meant that I had a chance to meet my Great Grandfather. One strange thing is that both of his discharge dates are birthdays in my immediate family. Excluding the years, the 2nd May is my Mum's birthday and the 19th June is my brother's birthday.
Sgt.Mjr. John Edward March
British Army 22nd Field Ambulance Royal Army Medical Corps
from:Leicester
John March joined the Royal Army Medical Corps on 30th of Nov 1901 aged 19. He had previously served in the 1st Volunteer Battalion Leicestershire Regiment (Militia). Prior to WW1 he served abroad in South Africa and in Aldershot.
He progressed through the ranks and was promoted to Staff Sergeant (Sgt) on 10th Aug 1914 and joined the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in Belgium on 16th Aug 1914. The following year on 5th Jun 1915 he was promoted to 2nd Quartermaster Sgt (2QMS). On 16th Sep 1915 he joined No 22nd Field Ambulance, 7th Division in the Field . On 15th Oct 1916 he joined No 7 General Hospital in St Omer and then Boulogne and remained until 24th Mar 1919. On the 31st Dec 1916 he was appointed Acting Sgt Major for the duration of the War and on the 1st Jun 1918 he was promoted to Temporary Warrant Office (WO) Class I & appointed Temporary Sgt Major. On 20th Jun 1918 he was substantively promoted to WO Class II.
John Edward March was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal, which was promulgated in the London Gazette on 17th Jun 1918. On 12th May 1919 he returned to Depot RAMC Aldershot and on 1st Oct 1921 was promoted to substantive WO Class I and appointed Sgt Major. He was posted to the Mustapha Reception Station in Alexandria, Egypt and his family went with him. They returned to England on the 8th Apr 1927. He was discharged on 24th Sep 1927 after 26 Years Service.
Pte Percy James March
British Army 9th Royal Fusiliers Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regt)
from:Battersea, London
Pte. Ernest William Marchant
British Army 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards
from:Freshford, Bath
Recently a small parcel arrived in the post from England. In it was a box, well made of thick cardboard with metal reinforcement at its edges. It is a spectacle container designed to be sent, as is, through the post. On the top are Grandpas address and the senders details: F.I. Tovey, Optician, New Bond Street, Bath. It cost threepence to send and is postmarked 15th November 1920. Within the box are several things, the most important being a small army-issue notebook. It is a diary written by my grandfather during the Great War of 1914-1918 and covers the period September 1917 to just after hostilities ceased. There are daily entries and, jotted on the last few pages, some little bits of soldiers philosophy written in the style of those times.
He enlisted on February 23rd, 1915; a married man aged 36 and five months, a master mason and father of five small children. I assume enlisted means what it says on his attestation form for it seems improbable that conscription could have gathered him up so early in the war. However, the squire held a majority in the Coldstream Guards and had a company raised almost exclusively of men from the parish, so peer pressure probably accompanied the general euphoria of the day. That grandpa was military-minded is undoubted - his army papers show him as serving in the militia, 1st Volunteer Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment so I think the chance to go to war might well have been impossible to deny. His motives could have been patriotism, adventure or escape. Most likely it was a combination, or rationalisation, of all three.
The Guards being what they are, it would have taken most of the year to turn him into a proficient soldier despite his service in the reserve, for this was well before the tragedy of Haigs half-trained boys. The Coldstreamers were proud and a man had to prove himself before he was shown the enemy.
I look across the lush green lawn at the toddlers, screaming and dancing with delight as they push one another under the sprinkler then throw themselves, chubby arms linked, into the paddling pool. For today, Armistice Day, is seasonably warm. The barbie is nearly ready and I must feed my grandchildren and their parents.
Life at the front was the usual mixture of boredom, discomfort and terror. Of plum-and-apple [jam]; Pass the grease [margarine]; Stand to! then, all too often, Over the top!
Whatever it was really like he endured; fighting in the mud, on the firing step or crouched fearfully in a funkhole as enemy howitzers blasted his trench. He was in the front line for somewhat over six months. It probably felt like a lifetime.
- Life is a duty - bear it
- Life is a burden - bear it
- Life is a burden - wear it
Bond St, Rotten Row, St Julien, Metigny, Morlancourt were his battlegrounds, and Mealthe, Flers, Lavantic and Mailly.
A true countryman, he would have been comforted by the copses and undergrowth, before they were bombarded into water-filled craters, that formed the woods known as Magnet, Trony, Deville Pozieres and, with grim irony, Sanctuary. Side by side with his mates he defended trenches at Martinpuick, Coulitte, Les Boeufs and what he records as Ypres St Jean. In the front line they learned the hard way to be philosophical about their predicament
- My belongings leave to my next of kin
- My purse is empty - theres nothing in
- My rifle, uniform, pack and kit
- I leave to the next poor devil itll fit
- But if this war I manage to clear
- Ill keep them all for a souvenir.
On rare occasions he was plucked from the front line and sent home to England to freshen up. No showers, no change of clothes. My grandmother would scrub him clean in the big tin bath in front of the fire then wash and press his uniform. The days off were a nicely calculated minimum to get him ready to return to battle.
- Life is a game of cricket
- Mans the player, tall and stout
- Standing to defend his wicket
- Lest misfortune bowl him out.
For Grandpa it was a minenwerfer shell, surely with each of their names upon it, that entombed his whole Section. His comrades were all killed, I hope instantaneously. It took two days to find Grandpa and dig him out of the collapsed trench.
A few years back, my Uncle Basil, at 78, made the journey to Australia to visit us. He told me that Leslie, his eldest brother and my father, was alone in the cottage in 1916 when the postman - their uncle - toiled up the steep incline of Staples Hill to deliver a War Office telegram. My whole remembrance of Dad clicked into a different perspective when Basil recalled that ten year old Les kept the dreaded Missing in Action to himself. The first my grandmother knew was when, three days later, a telegram of reassurance arrived to say her husband had been found alive. The diary merely records that he was clouted out. This was at Le Transloy, on the banks of a gentle if muddy stream called The Somme. The official record is equally succinct: GSW Legs 20/11/16, in the Field. To the War Office, GSW [gun shot wounds] obviously covered a multitude of injuries.
November 1916 marked the end of the first great Somme battle, where nearly a million men were lost for an advance or retreat of a derisory few muddy yards. Grandpa had served the whole of the campaign
As a Blighty his wound was effective; for nine months he stayed in bed in a military hospital in the north of England. He lost no limb but, just as he had carved many a headstone before the war and many a trench on the Somme, so did France gouge his whole being.
From then, he says, 'it was all downhill.'
The garden is quiet now; the littlies have gone to bed, their parents are off to a party and grandpa is babysitting. On the patio I lean back in the old cane chair and think. So much about war. Yet my father was just too old for 39-45. As a Nasho I missed Korea by one training course. Vietnam was not applicable in UK. Perhaps young people will start to judge for themselves when the recruiting sergeants start to sing their siren song. Perhaps the future for my grandchildren is looking better and better. Its certainly more secure than in the past, when people really did believe their leaders were, by definition, right.
He was eventually transferred to Windsor Castle on light duties. These comprised duty as usual (unspecified in the diary), haircut parades, blanket-shaking, coal-carrying, Church Parade on Sunday and, every fortnight, a visit to the MO for TMB. It seems this was a medical board to determine his progress, and thus his fitness to return to the front.
In the event, he remained B3 for eighteen months, enveloped in a tedium of convalescence.
- Mans ingress - naked and bare be
- Mans progress - trouble and care
- Mans egress the Devil know where.
The post, which was the only method of long distance communication available to private soldiers, provided some respite. Every day he wrote to my grandmother and every day he received a letter by return, sometimes folded within his local newspaper. On occasion the children, Marjorie, Les, Bill, Reg or Basil, would add a word or two or even send a card to the father they were beginning to forget.
Grandpa inevitably posted his letters at the Main Gate of the barracks. Then, if the evening were fine, he would continue his walk to Oakley Green to call in at the Nags Head.
The monotony was interspersed by occasional weekend visits home, each journey recorded in meticulous detail: left Windsor 2.40 p.m.; Paddington 4 p.m.; arrived Freshford 7.17 via Trowbridge. The children of course were all there, so seven in the tiny thatched cottage must have been a bit of a squeeze. I can just remember visiting my grandmother some thirty years on and recall in detail the tiny kitchen in which she cooked on a Primus stove making, endlessly it seemed, jams, cakes and pies, and the cramped surroundings where on four needles she knitted socks, always grey. The weekend, therefore, would be taken up in strolls. By our standards they were all prodigious walkers, simply through necessity - cars or even horses were not for the working class. Around Freshford the Avon valley is extremely steep and destinations along level roads are very few.
Nevertheless, the diary records double three-mile trips to Westwood on Sundays for morning and evening chapel service. I think my Grandmother, the believer in the family, went to witness her unfailing gratitude. Grandpa, I suspect, just went.
There were walks to Iford with six year old Basil to stand on the little stone bridge that was adorned with the statue of Britannia (Boer War?) then perhaps another precipitous mile down to Avoncliffe where as a stonemason Grandpa had worked for Mr Jordan. He even made the six mile hike to Bradford-on-Avon to buy a new watch to replace that broken by a billiard ball in the Windsor Barracks YMCA. Then, when the children were bedded down, there would be a short stroll with Agnes before turning in. But, come Monday morning, it was always back to barracks, the journey recorded, train time by train time.
If anything these weekends heightened his fear of being sent back to the Western Front. From Windsor Castle he was allowed home reasonably often but never is there any indication that the War Office was about to give him his freedom. In England the philosophy that God was on the side of the big battalions died hard. Get them well, get them back! was the cry. It doesn't go unrecorded in the diary: Last night all men recalled off leave. Confined to barracks. Got the wind up.
He sees drafts of B1 men leaving for France at midnight and towards the end the diary entry is a stark regraded B2. Obviously there was nothing more to say. The constant and near tangible spectre of trenches, rats, lice, mud and the Hun bombardment hovered above him.
- The fortunes of war
- Be you ever so bold
- Is a mound of earth
- Or a stripe of gold
It didnt happen, though. Time and time again he was passed fit only for light duties and remained on the roster at Windsor Castle. Presented arms to the Royal family. Opened the gate for Prince of Wales. King arrived castle by motor.
All this is noted, as is knocked out Bandsman Blake (but no explanation). More often now, Roll on or Roll on my three appears at the end of each days entry. The Hun, he says, is still on the run stuff to give them! He can sense the end of things - in a barracks the right information has a way of trickling through.
On October 13, 1918: The Huns shouting Kamerad. But on the first day of November yet another huge draft of men leaves for France. Then, suddenly it seems, its all over: 8/11 Hun peace envoys over lines. 10/11 Hohenzolleren abdicates.
The next day: ARMISTICE DAY - war over, town [Windsor] beflagged. Then, at the end of the page three years nine months service today. But they still wouldnt let him go home. I dont know how my grandmother coped. Perhaps her gratitude to her God for her husbands survival overcame all hardship. He was kept on duty at the Castle throughout that Christmas:
Xmas Eve, Roll on. Napoo...
Indeed, il ny en plus.
At last, in February 1919, he was demobilised via the Dispersal Centre at Fovant, near Portsmouth. Here, apart from the administration of his release, they gave him very little - a suit, five pounds [$10] and a rail ticket home. He arrived in Freshford at 10.30 p.m. (train times diligently recorded, as usual) and for the next few days was able to record tres bon times as he enjoyed his furlough.
But all too soon it was back to Avoncliffe to work as a mason for ninepence an hour: went fairly well, very cold, hands not used to mallet and chisels. Then after work and at the weekends there was the cottage to whitewash, the garden to re-establish and a family to be cared for in a land fit for heroes.
- What is life?
- A little gush
- A little rush
- A little hush
Perhaps the light duties, standing guard at Windsor Castle, were easier for a man to take than what he perceived to be his future at home. Perhaps the mateship of the battalion and the sense of away-ness from the need to assume total responsibility for his growing family, in the most honourable manner of course, made life in uniform again appear more attractive.
I have been unable to discover any subsequent diary - he probably couldnt see any point in continuing to record his what, mundane? lifestyle - and the saddest part of the notebook comes at the very end, just over five months after peace broke out.
He has received one pound, seventeen shillings and sixpence (less than $5) for 55 hours work as a stonemason. In what little spare time available to him he has had to augment this paltry sum by looking after the schoolmasters garden. Ding-dong existence no change same old routine miss the Old Brigade.
Slipped between the pages of the diary there are three snapshots. First is dated December 1915, when he became a trained Coldstreamer. It is a studio portrait, and he poses self-consciously. He is in full uniform, puttees, cheese-cutter cap and swagger stick. He looks very confident and his waxed moustache adds an air of arrogance.
The second tells me he must have recovered, to the extent possible, from his terrible injuries, for this photo sees him in uniform once more. But it is not the dashing, tailored, tight-fitting guardsmans outfit that he now wears. No; although its again a suit of khaki, the baggy trousers and a shapeless blouse signal the army surplus garb that in 1939 was handed out, with scant resort to measurement, to ex-soldiers. The Local Defence Volunteers they were called, a name as dull as its uniform. Churchill hated LDV so gave it some oomph as the much more newsworthy Home Guard. Its fame now rests with the TV program Dads Army, which depends for its humour on laughing at the antics of the old-timers. I note, though, that in this picture Grandpa is shouldering a Lee Enfield .303, the rifle that had been his friend. Nevertheless, he looks as if hes well aware of the difference in his appearance.
The third picture has Grandpa in civvies. Here he once again stands straight and severe as befits a guardsman but now he is wearing a countrymans baggy tweeds and flat cap. Five years old in my new sailor suit, I am sitting on the carrier of his sit-up-and-beg bicycle. It is Easter 1940. He died at end of that the year, of cancer. With what we know now its not inconceivable that the seeds of his death were sown on the battlefields of France. Im sure, though, that he would have considered that notion in some way insulting to his dead comrades.
At the bottom of the spectacle box, tucked beneath the notebook and wrapped in ancient tissue paper, are his three service and campaign medals, one of them engraved: The Great War For Civilisation 1914-1919. These gewgaws were dismissed with contempt as Pip, Squeak and Wilfred by millions of unemployed veterans in the immediate postwar years, when the struggle for survival was almost as desperate as any spell in the front line.
At the end of the diary, written on the inside cover in a very continental hand perhaps in an estaminet quite late at night by who I like to imagine was a compassionate and pretty mademoiselle is Le Bon Temps Viendra. Alas, for Grandpa it was a brave but hollow hope.
Vale, 15544 Private Ernest William Marchant, Coldstream Guards, shelled in the front line at the very end of the disaster known as the First Somme campaign and buried beneath stinking mud, thence to return home to pain, hardship and poverty.
But Im sure he would deride all that. After all, he would have said, in just twenty weeks a million soldiers from both sides died in that battle - and I didnt.
Rflmn. F. Marchant
British Army 7th Battalion Rifle Brigade
F. Marchant served with the 7th Battalion Rifle Brigade. I found papers and medals relating to him amongst papers kept by my mother. They were with her father's medals and I have no idea why she had them. My Grandfather was in the West Yorkshire Regiment and as far as I know, was not a prisoner of war. I added F Marchant as he should not be forgotten.
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