[Closed] Had to do this before the end of today, please may I introduce my Grandad.....

Dunno what to say, except .. respect.

Thank you for your sacrifice sergeant Grainger. Rip mate.

Respect....Hope you do get to visit the cemetery.

Thumbs Up!!

If you do, go to the Menin Gate. I was dumbstruck. The cemeteries are incredible but the gate just hit home. Huge respect to those lost on both sides who simply did what they thought was right/were told to do and paid the ultimate price.

“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

Gone incredibly dusty in our house all of a sudden.

Yes it was a bit dusty in the car this morning hearing that ^^

When you get there EGF, thank him from me.

Humbling post. And thank you for doing so.

I hope you get to the cemetery to pay your respects.

Thankfully my family survived the wars they fought in, I hope you make it to that small piece of England down there...
Thank him from me too.

The Soldier

IF I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Now, where's that "Like" button?

I found out the other day that my great grandmother lost her first husband and her brother in 1918, within 4 months of each other. My mum knows where they lay, and one day I intend to go out to France and pay my respects.

Your grandad looks so young esselgruntfuttock.

Utmost respect for him and his comrades, not sure I could do what they did.......

It's unimaginable what those poor guys went through, my great grandfather was a conscientious objector who refused to fight but drove an ambulance instead and was killed. My grandfather lied about his age to go because he was too young, he made it back, but evidently he was deeply traumatised by what he experienced and he carried it with him for the rest of his days. You better take some hankies when you get to hooge crater cemetery essel, I think you may need them!

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each other’s dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other’s truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm
We’ll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

C. H. Sorley

Watching "Teenage Tommies" on BBC2?
Fascinating, baffling and very moving.

I don't know where you are in the UK, but Ypres is a 5 hour drive from Sheffield if you exclude the ferry.

I first went at school.

Awe inspiring for all the wrong reasons

Respect from a fellow Light Infantry soldier!!
Always wondered why they spelt it serjeant instead of sergeant in the Light Infantry

My grandfather's brother was also killed at Ypres. I thought of him amongst the fallen at the Field of Remembrance.

I remember being taken to Edinburgh Castle to see the book which records those killed in Scottish regiments. I was astonished and frightened than so many of them were only a handful of years older than I was at the time.

Respect.

Think it has to do with the origin of the word sergeant being french for to serve or servant. So they use a old english version.

My Grandad was fortunate to survive WW1.
This is Will Cooper, great uncle on my mums' side, killed in action on July 1st 1916. The picture was painted by his sister (not my mum) a few weeks beforehand.
[url= https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5604/15583757640_2043381444.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5604/15583757640_2043381444.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/pK5Qdy ]
Pte Will Cooper[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/people/107347896@N06/ ]pickers48[/url], on Flickr

My Great Uncle died of flu in Mesopotamia, waiting to 'engage' the Ottoman Empire.

Shortly after the European war started, the British sent a military force to protect Abadan. In Abadan was one of the world's earliest oil refineries. British operational planning included landing troops in the Shatt-al-Arab. The reinforced 6th (Poona) Division from the British Indian Army was assigned, designated as Indian Expeditionary Force D (IEFD).

Another reason for British effort in Mesopotamia, especially in the minds of politicians like Austen Chamberlain (Secretary of State for India) and former Viceroy Lord Curzon, was to maintain British prestige with Indian Muslim opinion, and at first it was run by the India Office and Indian Army with little input from the War Office.

Can't help feeling that this wasn't what he enlisted for.
My Gran would never, for the rest of her days, buy anything German, ironically.
My Grandad fought on the Western Front and witnessed his mates killed in shellfire. Took his own life in the 50's.
What a terrible sacrifice their generation paid - I just hope we've learnt from it.

My father's cousin George Oliver Anderson aged 17 joined the Argyll and Southern Highlanders in Sept 1944 and was killed in March 1945 near the Dutch-German border. I now have the letter to his mother informing her of his death along with the letter from the padre insisting he did not suffer.I also have the card from the King expressing sympathy. My father always expressed regret that he never went to see his cousins grave but we fixed that 2years ago and visited Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Germany. It's difficult to describe the feeling that day looking at 7000 headstones,many without names and with the words «Known to God» written on them. It's impossible not to think of the sheer waste of life. I'll never forget my dad's face when we found Georges grave,pure emotion with a feeling of relief that he had finally said goodbye. My dad's 85 now,George had he lived would have been 88. Just a laddie

ta very much essel's grandad.

I take 40 of my pupils to the battlefields as part of a History/Social Subjects trip I organize every two years( hence a what headphones thread started by me every so often) we lay a wreath and the boys old enough to have gone read Dulce est. I am going to add this thread to my favorites and we will visit him for you in 2016.I agree about the mention of the Menin Gate,but for me it is when you get to Tyne Cot and about 80% of the 11,000 graves are not named,that the scale of it is laid out.

They made the ultimate sacrifice so we wouldn't have to. Incredible generation(s) of men and women; and some barely more than children!

Fortunately all of my relatives came home. One wouldn't (or couldn't) talk about what he'd seen. He'd been in a Tanks Corps. Another was in the Artic Convoys and thankfully I was old enough to listen to, and be interested in, his stories before he died.

I've never been as silent for as long as when I walked around WWII cemetries in France. All of those unmarked graves. There are no words...

This song sums up all I know of the World Wars.

I am going to add this thread to my favorites and we will visit him for you in 2016.

Duckman, that's awesome & I'd appreciate it greatly, just in case I don't get there.
My sister's been but as far as I know she's the only family member who has. (No-one even knew where he was till she did the research)
Thanks again, hope you make it & say 'Hi from his grandson, also called James Grainger'

I am going to add this thread to my favorites and we will visit him for you in 2016.

Duckman, that's awesome & I'd appreciate it greatly, just in case I don't get there.
My sister's been but as far as I know she's the only family member who has. (No-one even knew where he was till she did the research)
Thanks again, hope you make it & say 'Hi, & thank you, from his grandson, also called James Grainger'

Massive respect for those heroes. I wonder what they would think of the modern UK they helped to shape? Probably be largely proud I reckon, despite a few really nasty thorns.

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/57239/DOGGETT,%20ALBERT%20EDWARD

My Great grandfather's brother. Also noted the spelling of Serjeant with a J, but have always wondered why.

It's hard to realise that all of those on CWGC website were not just real people, but family.

Really must visit some time though.

Will do egf

OP and all those who've posted stories here my greatest respect.

I never met one of my Grandfather's nor did indeed did my mother. He was killed in Burma in WW2, just 20 years of age having left behind his newly pregnant wife. My Nan never really recovered.

I can't recommend enough a visit to either The Menin gate or any of the cemeteries.
Tyne Cot is huge. However when we cycled through Belgium last year, we saw many very small clusters of British graves. Some of these are tucked into wooded corners of fields, always white so it's easy to spot. Unbelievably moving and thought provoking.

Thank you to each and every one of your young relatives who fought for us.

Not yet got back to WWI ancestry, but I'd like to before my own dad passes away. He served in Aden and in Cyprus. His father, my grandfather, was in the Merchant Navy in WWII, torpedoed and survived.

Met a guy after our remembrance parade in the village on Sunday who had two great-uncles on the war memorial, one in each war.

If you are into this sort of thing, the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas is well worth a visit.

[img][url= https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7475/15772643451_9a840c5f54_s.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7475/15772643451_9a840c5f54_s.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/q2LVot ]File0002_A[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/people/29147412@N00/ ]keith280764[/url], on Flickr[/img]

Great Grandfather, fought the turks in Mesopotamia.