Anniversary

My family have memories of the conflict which affected our close relatives.

I was born ten years after the armistice and have recollections of my mother and father talking about how the conflict had touched their lives.

My father fought at the Somme with the 22nd Manchester Regiment and also on the Austrian and Italian front in 1918.

He was awarded the Military Medal for bravery on the battlefield.

He was always reluctant to discuss how the medal was obtained. This was how we were affected on my father’s side.

My mother’s side were very involved. The Lowerson family were from Fencehouses and from a large family.

Uncle George was a sergeant in the Durham Light Infantry and was unscathed in the battles. Uncle Henderson was wounded twice in the same regiment and was left with recurrences of the wounds for the rest of his life.

Uncle Harry was a sapper and died from his wounds after a gun limber entered his back. He was nursed at a dressing station near Ypres.

On the French front Uncle Jack was killed at the battle of Pozieres, during the battle of the Somme, on the Albert to Bapaume road.

He was also in the DLI who were attached to an Australian division.

He had no known grave and was posted as missing. His name is on the wall at Pozieres’ war grave.

He was married and had two sons. Sadly, he never saw his youngest son because his wife, my Aunt Maggie, was pregnant when he went to war. She was left to bring up the two boys on a widow’s pension.

How sad for my maternal grandmother who lost two sons in the conflict and my mother two loving brothers.

This war was known as the war to end all wars.

Alas this was not to be as I was to join the DLI in the Second World War and have a mother who was to worry about another sacrifice that might have to be made.

RB Seyburn, ex-2nd Battalion DLI, Billingham.