My Grandfather

I had nearly finished this backblip a few hours ago when Firefox did an update and I lost it. Grrrr!

Short version: Continuing our holiday blips, we drove from Sussex to Northamptonshire last Thursday via London.

Clockwise from top left:
Crossing Hammersmith Bridge.
The Chapel in St Mary's RC Cemetery, Kensal Green.
View south across the cemetery - my grandfather's (unmarked) grave is somewhere under the built up section in the middle of the picture.
The Chapel interior - the inscription is just to the left of the altar.
Centre: The memorial inscription to Hubert Morris (or Bert as he was known to the family) which I organised last year.

Longer story:
We didn't know where my Grandfather was buried until last summer when our family history trip to Wales resulted in finding a cousin of my mother - so exciting as contact had been lost with that side of the family over 70 years ago. She put us in touch with other cousins including Rhondda in Australia, who had a memorial card from Hubert's funeral. When Mr & Mrs Dazed were in London later in 2008 they visited the cemetery and picked up the form for requesting a memorial in the Chapel. I was very pleased to see how nice it looks and happy that he has recognition after all these years.

Hubert lost his leg through an accident in the trenches in France and was invalided out on 24 May, just before the main Somme offensive started on 1 July 1916. Twice in his War Diary (also discovered through these 'new' cousins) he mentions 'going under the X rays' and this was almost certainly the cause of his death from cancer of the hip 6 years later, only 4 months after my mother was born. Because he died so many years later he was never recognised as a war casualty and my grandmother received no pension until the 1970s - she was impoverished and had to go back to live with her parents.

I'm writing this on Sunday 2 August which is the 7th anniversary of Mum's death. It's such a shame she didn't live to know all this about her father - she had always wanted to know about him.

I've put some photos of Hubert on Flickr too.