So near but so far.

[leefer]

http://www.cwgc.org/search/certificate.aspx?casualty=652340

Been doing a lot of family history lately,being brought up in care it is only lately pretty late in my life that i have gathered info.
My Grandad and his brother John(above link)joined up in Southampton during WW1,my grandad survived although affected by gas.....his Brother my great uncle served with the Hants regiment until they were nearly wiped out.....because of the depleted numbers they joined the Wilts Regiment along with just five officers...origanally 60 officers.

[url width=656 height=889]http://i934.photobucket.com/albums/ad185/swindon123/war.jpg[/url]

He was a battler and so nearly survived finally being killed just two months before the wars end..........by all accounts it sent my grandad into a spiral of despair,was never the same hearing his brother didnt make it.
A sad story but being brought up not knowing this story has made me even more proud of him.......only aged 21,born in Somerset,brought up in Hants.....and fighting with the Wiltshires

Sad to think his resting place is so far off away from home in Israel in a land where alas the theatre of war is still all around even today.

[Bewster]

good work Leefer - it must make you very proud.

[leefer]

Cheers Bewster it does.

[Bewster]

My gramps was in Egypt and did everything he could to get out of duties, including picking a scab on a flesh wound in order to make it go septic and pretending to be catholic.

I'm still proud though - as everybody should be of anybody that went to fight.

[leefer]

WW2 of course Bewster not WW1?....i didnt even know there was fighting in Israel during WW1 where my Relly died.

[Bewster]

Just checked wth my mum - Eqypt in WW1, I don't know what he was doing there. You are right though -there wasn't any fighting there. Gallipoli was probably the closest

My great uncle was capture by the japs and was in a POW camp in WW2. Like most veterans he never really spoke about it and sadly he died when I was young so I never got to ask.

[leefer]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/middle_east_01.shtml

[Bewster]

excellent - thanks

[jutty274]

Reading that Leefer made me think of my gramp, he was injured in the second world war that in later life crippled him. He was at the back of his regiment when they marched past some dead germans they had just killed. The vibrations of them marching past set off a german who had been killed with his finger on the trigger, it shot him and the 2 other men at the back. The bullet lodged in his coxyx and moved up to his spine in his 40's and was paralysed from the waist down by the age of 50.