Dear Soldier,

It is a hundred years since the beginning of the war you fought in and I am thinking of you, as are many other people.

My father also served on the Western Front having joined the army in 1915 and being sent straight away to France. To arrive where they were due i.e. The Somme they had to march from the Channel Port where they were disembarked as there was no question of any transport. Even that seems barbaric to me but then I am lazy about these things.

Once at The Front he found himself in a trench half-filled with water and he and his colleagues sloshed about for some days until the time came for them to go “over the top”. It was not long before the great moment arrived and along with a number of colleagues off he went into Nomansland. Within minutes the Germans opened fire and he was struck down having been wounded in his jaw.

Somebody pulled him into a shell-hole, which again was half-filled with water, where he stayed for some considerable time before he was rescued by a British Ambulance Unit and taken back to base to have his face attended to. It was amazing that he lived but he did and after being initially patched-up he was sent back to England and went to a hospital where he had one of the first Plastic operations ever attempted and he had his jaw repaired with a piece of bone taken from his shin. It was no doubt very painful and for the rest of his life he had to slurp his food, much to the amusement of my three daughters, because he could not use his jaw in the same way as normal people do.

After some months he was discharged from the Army and went to work in London where he met my mother. After some years they married and later on I arrived on the scene. Unfortunately, by that time both my father and mother had been thrown out of work and were living on the dole. Life was exceedingly hard and there was not enough money to feed a child as well as the two adults. Somebody suggested to him that a new organisation called the British Legion had been set up to help ex-servicemen through hard times. He duly applied for relief but was refused for some reason. This left him extremely bitter, having fought and been wounded he was not even thought worthy of an allowance to help feed his child and forever after he never bought a Poppy nor had any good to say about the British Legion. Let's hope it is different now.

I am sure you had an honourable war and served your country well. Good luck Soldier. We salute you and remember you.

May God bless you.

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