Another Ancestor of mine is Ernest Halke......son of one of my great grandads brothers....if you get what i mean.
What an army life he led.
Born in the working class area of Sheffield.. Pitt Street he joined up as a young man aged 18....i have seen his entire army record and it reads like....well something incredible in my eyes.
Starting of down close to us he did training at Tdworth in 1893....the same year he was sent packing to South Africa to help the cause before the Boer War started...he was there 3 years...then he served in India for 8 years.
Back to blighty and he served another 9 years back home including dangerous stints in Limerick and Cork...as the IRA started getting nasty.
1914 arrives WW1 starts and he is sent to Gallipoli......BEAR IN MIND HE HAD ALREADY SERVED A STAGGERING 21 YEARS!!
Aged 39 his stint in Gallipoli is brought to an end due to a severe Shrapnell wound that rips his left thigh to shreds and he is on his way back home on the Hospital Ship HMS Egypt and spend a year recovering.....this wound most probably saved his life....bearing in mind the war went on for another three years.....plenty of medals later he then spends the rest of his days in the Labour Army Corps when he was finally discharged in 1918 after 25 years of hard service.....through all that hardship he came through,how tough a man must he have been i wonder.
With the help of a decent pension(for those days) he married Gertrude White a year after his discharge and dodged the german bombs again that rained down on Sheffield in WW2!....passing away in 1946.
He must have thought the World a nasty place....seeing action in South Africa,India,Ireland and of course Gallipoli.....not forgetting blighty
His wife Gertrude died in 1974....aged 101.
I like Ernest....i like him a lot.
