218701 Pte. Reginald Grant Willis British Army 1/6th (City of London Rifles) Battalion London Regiment from:Edmonton Recently my mother talked about her father's WW1 experiences.
Not having the best of home life my grandfather, Reginald Willis, ran away to fight, seeing it as a better way out. He was 15 and by time his father found out what he was up too he was on his way to France.
That was all my mum knew until, as a youngster, she walked into the normally locked bathroom to find my grandfather washing. From that brief encounter, and my grandfather's acute embarrassment (covered up by lots of shouting), saw the wounds that he had suffered. Almost one side of his body was held together by a metal plate.
While at Ypres serving with the The City of London Rifles he was badly injured. How he received his injuries, I don't know. His friends moved him under a bush and said they'd come back for him later, which they did. What happened after that is not known.
I do have one of three medals he received, The Allied Victory Medal. He received the usual, The British War Medal, Silver War Badge, Allied Victory Medal. The other two he either sold or binned, the one my mum retrieved from a dustbin after he had thrown in there with the words 'the war hasn't done anything for me'.
As a child I remember him being around then disappearing never seeing him again, the rest of the story is not for here but suffice to say that he was probably still suffering 50 years on. We'll never know.
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