Skeletons

Last month I posted in the comments about family rumours of a deserter and a member of Sinn Fein. The latter rumour is untrue; the former, we-ell... it's complex and a blight on the British for how they treated their troops. So here's the story:

My uncle mentioned he had some medals from WW1 but didn't know to whom they belonged. He'd been given them by his mother with this comment: "He came home, told me to burn his uniform and take the rifle to the tip." That's it.

Uncle K rang me this week with the medal number. The number is the service number of the owner of the medal and I duly looked them up and found the information from great-uncle J.'s service record.

J. was born in Lancashire, but when war broke out he was in Clyde in Scotland. He joined the Royal Naval Division - a division made up of sailors for whom a ship couldn't be found for them to serve upon. The Division had infantry units, artillery units and machine gun units attached.

Sent to Gallipoli (wow, I always thought none of my ancestors were there!) he was shot in the chest in July, 1916. Evacuated back to England aboard the Hospital Ship Letitia, he wasn't expected to survive. But he did. It took doctors five months to diagnose a pneumo thorax or a collapsed lung. He had the lung removed.

His relatives were informed of the injury, the seriousnesss of it, but were not informed about anything else: when he was transferred to various hospitals, when he was transferred from battalion to battalion.

My great-grandmother was illiterate and wouldn't have been able to read the telegrams, but J.'s youngest brother W. was literate and would probably have read any messages (my great grandfather died in 1902 in mysterious circumstances).

Over the next year, he was in and out of hospitals - on one occasion, he was chucked in the pokey for seven days for being AWOL - and transferred between battalions.

On 31 August 1916, my g-grandmother received a telegram that read: "Found drowned at Wimbourne, 28.8.16. Relatives informed, inquest held yesterday, open verdict.”

On the same day, the 31 August 1916, the record reads: "At a court of enquiry held on the 26th inst., was declared a deserter & is struck off the strength of Battn. 26.8.16."

The following day, a telegram is sent to the Officer in Charge of the Battalion: "Cancel wire re death by drowning, has returned from absence”. It does not record whether a telegram was sent to the relatives, but I hope so.

Again, J. spent time, a month this time, in detention, but returned to duty and is listed as being a reinforcement for the Base Depot in November 1916.

For a year he served without any marks on his record. Then, his battalion was sent to France. Remember, he's missing a lung at this stage and the Germans are using gas attacks on the Allied lines.

He fought at Passchendaele, the battle of Cambrai, then disappears. In January 1918, he's listed as not yet returning from leave. It's not until November 1918 that he's listed as 'missing' and an inquiry is sent to his relatives. "No news" was the reply. Then, in January 1919 "Assumed Killed in Action 23.11.1917” is written on his record, marked "dicharged dead", and from there, the card goes off to wherever KIA cards go.

His name, rank and serial number are listed on the Tyne Cot Memorial in Belgium near Zonnebeke where the names of 35,000 officers and men whose final resting places are unknown are engraved.

It's an astonishing tale that this man, this volunteer should have been forced to remain on active duty with only one lung, and sent to the slaughterhouse that was Passchendaele. How he managed to return to England, to his family, without being picked up by the Military Police I'll probably never know. I can only speculate that during the absolute chaos, he managed it.

Of J.'s brothers, my grandfather P. lost a leg, J2 was shot in the left arm, rendering it useless, J3 was gassed and died ten years later as a result, brothers M and A were also wounded, but I have no information on them. W was too young to serve. We think that the family felt J. did his duty and more and refused to inform authorities of his return.

But how do I know J. didn't die on the Fields of Flanders when all records show that's where he lies, unknown, in eternal slumber? I have a photograph of him taken just before WWII in Wales...