250321 Pte. John James Walker British Army Army Service Corps from:72 Gifford St., Islington, London My maternal grandfather, John Walker, enlisted as a private in 1915 at the age of 45. What was he thinking? There were five children at home and they were left with his wife, my grandmother, Elizabeth Walker. The youngest was my mother, aged five years. According to Elizabeth, John James simply disappeared one day, meaning perhaps, he just didn't come home, and eventually she found him at Aldershot training camp. My mother remembered being taken to the camp where Elizabeth confronted him.
It is perhaps difficult to understand the fever of enlistment that went on during the first years of WW1. My uncle, John William, known always as Will, had already enlisted when grandfather disappeared. Maybe that's what prompted him to go and leave his wife and children to fend for themselves.
All I know, since I never met my grandfather, is that, when my Uncle Will was wounded in France, John James attended him in the hospital in Southampton and hopefully, was present when he died of his wounds. Will was 19. My grandfather survived with damaged lungs from being gassed and spent the rest of his life tending his allotment in North London and drinking lots of beer.
I am not aware of any heroic acts he may have performed in battle. Probably just being there during wartime was heroic enough. He was just another man caught up in war fever at a time when it was widely considered cowardly and unpatriotic not to enlist and run the risk of getting yourself killed.
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