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When I was a children my great aunt gave me my GGF ‘s FWW medals, small soldier’s book and cap badge. Being only 13 I was delighted and put them away in a drawer.
Years later I learned my GGF had been a POW. Apparently he has said if he ever laid eyes on the man that smashed him in the face with his rifle butt there be hell to pay
We thought he had been a POW for 4 years, wrong. With the discovery of his service records we suddenly knew more about him in death than when he was alive
He fought his first battle at Loos and somehow mostly likely by a miracle survived
His next big push was the Somme and he went over the top on 1 July his Bn - 8th Lincolns was again decimated. Again the vast majority of officers KIA
The next action the 8 Lincs were able to muster was towards the end of the battle in November 1916 - he William Walker Allen was wounded and returned to Blighty with a piece of German shrapnel in his neck
1917 brought new horrors - the mud of Third Ypres and yet he survived, carried in, fought it out . A few precious days of leave at home and then back again to the WF...
March 1918 was perhaps his sternest test a member of 2/5thbLincolns caught in the maelstrom of the Kaiser’s Battle facing Ernest Junger’s regiment. Somehow Bill survived
In the last hundred days during an attack September 1918 (now with the 1st Lincolns) he was captured and taken POW and then forced to work in a German coal mine. Thankfully he was back home in Blighty for Christmas 1918.
And in England’s darkest hour he answered the call to arms once again working and serving in the Home Guard until December 1944. I never met him - He died before I was born but his memory lives on ...