Anniversaries

So today is the first anniversay of this Blog. Huzzah! Apart from missing out one whole month... this is the first diary type thing I've ever managed to keep going for more than a few months. Evidently the "Dear Diary" thing doesn't cut it and I need an audience. What a shameless attention seeker. :~S

Meanwhile I'm so rushed off my feet in getting ready to go up the Exeter tomorrow for the show that I spent the morning cleaning those auger bits. Sometimes my displacement activity-seeking surprises even me...

On a more serious note, a parcel containing some of my paternal grandfather's WWI documents arrived from my aunt this morning. As it's unlikely I'll be posting on Friday, Armistice Day, I thought I'd post this now. Here he is on the left; Lieutenant, later Captain in
the 9th Battalion Duke of Wellington's Regiment, aka the West Riding, aged about 22 or 23. At some point he won the Military Cross, but I'm not sure exactly how. Amongst the papers are numerous trench maps, photos etc, including the document on the right. It's a resume of their division's operations from August 1918 until the Armistice. Strange to think that the absence of tanks was worded as a matter of pride, rather than one of anger as it would be now. As there's a map of Chapel Hill amongst the papers, I assume HJF was involved in that attack. He went on to become a member of the Indian Civil Service, becoming Chief Secretary of United Provinces and died in 1981. My grandmother's brother, Cuthbert, wasn't so lucky. He joined the Middlesex Regiment in 1914 but was killed in action in September 1918. As far as I'm aware, he's the only member of my family to have died in the armed forces - although plenty have served in them - so, as ever, he'll be uppermost in my thoughts on the 11th. He so very nearly made it.