sometime between dawn's stand-to and dusk, my maternal grandfather, Private William Victor Collins 6th Dragoon Guards, died in action somewhere on the Somme.

He lies buried in a small military cemetery just to the North of the village of Templeux-le-Guérard, in the Departement of the Somme. Alongside him is a fellow soldier from the same regiment - perhaps they knew each other, perhaps not.

I've been to visit him - the first of our far-flung family every to do so, and it's a fine place to rest, if rest you must. I left him a set of my shiny new crowns and collar badges for company. He was a bit of a rogue, but he had joined up about a week before the declaration of war, knowing the inevitability of what was happening around him, so he was no coward. He lived an unimaginable life in the war, from the very beginning, and almost made it to the end. If he had lived, so many lives, my own included, would have been very different - I might not be he here at all, nor any of my side of the family.

With so many young men of promise swallowed up by bullet and shell and mud, a world with them in it would be very different, that's for sure.

I'll be raising a glass to him tonight, in recognition of his sacrifice at the age of 24, and also the man who took his place when my grandma remarried in 1919. He is the grandad I'll be remembering remember with great love and fond memories, but I can't help wonder how it might have been.

tac

Lest We Forget...

Interesting thanks for posting this Tac, sobering to read though. So many young men.....

Having read the accounts of Winston Churchill, who was an officer on/near the front off and on, and General Adrian Carton de Wiart, who was wounded repeatedly and awarded a Victoria Cross at some point, the documentaries shown now of the hapless millions of French soldiers, as well as briefer descriptions from various US soldiers, like Harry Truman and most of the men who became flag officers in WWII, it is hard to imagine a more horrific miserable experience, terrible in every conceivable way. It almost seems like those who died were the lucky ones.

My Great Uncle was gassed in the Argonne Forest but he survived. He never talked about it. He blew his top when I joined the TN National Guard in 1966. He said I would be in Vietnam in a year. He was a good man. Glad I got to know him. He hated war.

The British lost an entire generation in WWI.