Dear Grandad,

Although you died many years before I was born and so we never ever met, I wanted to send this open letter to you to tell you just how proud  and how in awe I am of you and of your bravery.

You see, Dad, that’s your son Ron, never spoke much about you other than to say you worked hard and played hard and I now realise that he probably didn’t know much about you because what happened to you in WWI you kept to yourself and didn’t talk about.  Joanne, that’s Stan’s daughter, sent me a copy of your war record and reading it I realise why you never spoke about the past.  I cannot imagine, however, what you might have seen and experienced but can fully comprehend why, once the war was over, you chose to work and play hard.

Your record shows how you enlisted into the Royal Fusiliers in February 1915, leaving Nanny behind with, I think, two small children.  After training you were posted to the 8th Battalion in Flanders, engaging in the 2nd Battle of Ypres followed in early 1916 by the bayonet assault on the heavily fortified German Chord trenches at Hohenzollern where you were wounded and removed from the Company strength on 8th March 1916 and hospitalized in both France and England during your recovery, which took 5 months.

As soon as you were fit enough, 3rd August 1916, you were sent back to join the 2nd Battalion and then to the defence of the wet, muddy killing fields of the Somme, enduring heavy gas attacks on 8th and 9th.  As the freezing winter months approached you took part in the heavy fighting over Christmas, being wounded again.  You lay in No-Man’s Land for 3 days before being rescued.  What hell did you endure during that time?  What was going through your mind as you lay in agony with your fallen comrades all around you?  I cannot begin to imagine your pain, your despair and your fear.

The records of your injuries were lost, but they were so severe that it took you eleven months to recover.

And then, because they obviously thought you hadn’t suffered enough, you were sent back to the Front once again, first to the 22nd Battalion then transfering to the 9th Batallion in Cambrai.  You were taken sick after 29 days and were removed from the Company strength, but not before engaging in combat at Sonnet Farm near Bandeaux.

Once again, on February 2nd 1918 you returned to Front Line duties with the 3rd and then the 4th Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers.  You took part in combat all through that long summer until 11th September when the Germans launched an intense artillery barrage that included gas and it was this gas in the lungs that caused your withdrawal from the Front Line on 22nd September to the Woolwich Military Hospital in London.  After a specialised treatment you were sent to convalesce in a chest and lung sanitorium until finally on 20th February 1919 you were given a medical discharge and awarded the Silver Wounded Badge.  What on earth did you have to suffer to get a Gold one?

Although you lived another twenty-three years, you were always a sick man and your injuries made you accessible to all kinds of infections, TB being the most severe and the one that finally caused your death.

How can we, who never experienced it, even being to imagine, or give a name to the horrors you saw and the pain and suffering you lived through?  Is it any wonder you never wanted to talk about it?

Pte G S/12581 Albert William Spires – I am so very proud to be your grand-daughter and beyond sad that I never ever had the honour of meeting you and that all your children –  eleven of them in the end! – didn’t really know the full story of all you endured.

I am a huge pacifist, and I abhor the arguement that if you’re pro-Remembrance you’re pro-war.

I wrote in my pevious blog that I will wear my poppy in remembrance and thanks that Dad and his brothers came back safely.

Now I know your story, I will wear it even more proudly.  You were indeed, one of the Lions.

Your loving grand-daughter,

Elaine xxx