Remembrance Day
Nov. 10th, 2013 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
londonronnieIt's a day that sets you thinking, isn't it.
My family were extremely lucky in that no immediate members were lost in either of the World Wars or in other conflicts. And yet their young men were all combatants - in the trenches, at sea and in the air - and goodness only knows what horrors they witnessed. How could they return home and be unaffected by their experiences? It must have coloured the rest of their lives, surely? When we see the carnage of the First World War it amazes me that anybody involved could have retained their sanity.
Several years ago on Remembrance Day I posted about my paternal grandfather, Albert Thomas Beazley. Today I thought I'd give a mention to my maternal grandfather, Henry Sherriff. A distant cousin sent me this photo a few years ago - it's in a helluva state, but I'm very grateful to have it. It shows my grandad Henry (standing in the centre of the photo) with three of his brothers, Bill, Tom and Sid, and their father, my gt-grandfather, William. There was a strong Army tradition in the family; William's father, my gt-gt-grandfather Charles Sherriff, fought in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo, and at least two of my grandfather's brothers continued in the Army for many years after the end of WW1.
The Sherriff boys all returned safely from their war, although the family didn't escape tragedy - their mother, my gt-grandmother Jane, was a victim of the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 and died at the beginning of November that year. She never saw her boys come home.
My family were extremely lucky in that no immediate members were lost in either of the World Wars or in other conflicts. And yet their young men were all combatants - in the trenches, at sea and in the air - and goodness only knows what horrors they witnessed. How could they return home and be unaffected by their experiences? It must have coloured the rest of their lives, surely? When we see the carnage of the First World War it amazes me that anybody involved could have retained their sanity.
Several years ago on Remembrance Day I posted about my paternal grandfather, Albert Thomas Beazley. Today I thought I'd give a mention to my maternal grandfather, Henry Sherriff. A distant cousin sent me this photo a few years ago - it's in a helluva state, but I'm very grateful to have it. It shows my grandad Henry (standing in the centre of the photo) with three of his brothers, Bill, Tom and Sid, and their father, my gt-grandfather, William. There was a strong Army tradition in the family; William's father, my gt-gt-grandfather Charles Sherriff, fought in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo, and at least two of my grandfather's brothers continued in the Army for many years after the end of WW1.
The Sherriff boys all returned safely from their war, although the family didn't escape tragedy - their mother, my gt-grandmother Jane, was a victim of the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 and died at the beginning of November that year. She never saw her boys come home.
