My Grandfather

I think this photo was taken on their wedding day. He died a few months after Mum was born, of cancer of the hip aged 25 and we now think it was because of the X rays he had during WW2. He enlisted and went to France in November 1915. In February 1916 he scalded his foot - such a little thing now but then, with no antibiotics and going in and out of the trenches it resulted in him being shipped back to the UK in May 1916 and having his leg amputated. This saved his life too, in the short term, because he got out before the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Mametz Wood where most of his Welsh regiment lost their lives.

He went to London and did a Pitman course, meeting my grandmother on a bus in 1918. They married in 1920 and he died in 1922. Such a short life.

We have found out so much information from his Welsh family, but sadly only in recent years and after my mother's death. I have his War Diary too, the original, which was in the safekeeping of a cousin in France.