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259957
Sgt. Arthur Robert Heath
British Army 128th Heavy Battery Royal Garrison Artillery
from:Winchmore Hill
My grandfather, Arthur Heath, enlisted into the RGA on 20th of October 1915 and went to France on 23rd of March 1916 with 128th Heavy Battery. He served as a gun layer through the war and was slightly wounded on 23rd of March 1918, but remained at duty. He received the Victory Medal and British War Medal.
He had two periods of leave at home during his service and first saw my mother when she was 18 months old, as she had been born six weeks after he was sent to France.
My grandmother recalled how, when he arrived home, he stripped naked on the doorstep and left all his lice-ridden clothing outside and immediately had a bath. She then picked up his underclothes and shirt with the coal tongs and put them in the copper for washing immediately, and ironed his trousers and tunic to kill the lice and eggs, which popped as the hot iron went over them.
At the end of the war, his father asked for his release from the army as he was needed in the market garden business run by the family and he was discharged on 4th of February 1919.