Bring The Boys Back Home

This has been a project several years in the making, mainly due to not being able to start it for the last three years because of work on the house and covid!
Mrs C’s grandfather was born near Chester, but moved out to Canada early in the 1900s. He was there when WW1 broke out and joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916. He saw action on the Western Front, notably at the battle for Vimy Ridge. Returning to the U.K. in1920, he subsequently married the girl in the pointy framed picture. She was Mrs C’s grandmother and served as a VAD nurse in the war, having previously been in service. An excellent sewer, she embroidered the main panel, incorporating his badges and shoulder flashes.
Since we found that last piece, we had always planned on remounting it along with his medals and pictures of them both. Finding the letter from King George V was a bit of a bonus, and we decided to incorporate that as well. The wording seems to be specifically aimed at soldiers from the Empire and Dominions, with its reference to the “Mother Country”. The framers have done a superb job with what we gave them, and even put a plastic wallet on the back for us to store some other bits of correspondence relevant to both of them.
We will be proud to hang this on our wall for the foreseeable future. Mrs C is the last of her family, so the plan is to see if we can find a suitable museum in Canada to donate the piece to, thus ensuring the memory of this brave man lives on.