Today was writing group day and February's topic is family history. Group members had brought along some fascinating items to get us going on the theme.
A bill from a 'Household Furnishings' shop with items like a crumb tray and brush (for the table), a black-lead brush (for cleaning the kitchen range), oilcloths for the floors, brass and iron bedsteads and lots of 'axminster carpets', enough to furnish a whole house - all for one hundred and sixty-two pounds and ten shillings. A letter from Australia written in 1937, a mother telling her daughter, who was at Oxford Uni, all about the family's Scottish connections and encouraging her to go and visit Scotland. And the fascinating life history of an indomitable granny who died not so long ago, aged a hundred and one.
My contribution was this photo of my Grandfather: he's fifteen years old in it, the year is 1916 and he has just lied about his age and enlisted for the trenches of WW1. Story goes that he went home to be told by his father: 'Yer ower young. Yer no' goin' ower there tae get yersel' killed!' He was then marched back down to the army recruitment office and made to give all his finery back.
I'm chasing up more details from a Canadian cousin who is into all this stuff and thinking of writing a wee story based on this snippet of our family history. Maybe from point of view of the recruiting sergeant... Hard to believe they didn't even ask for birth certs as proof of age. Perhaps they were just too desperate for more cannon fodder. Perhaps he was under pressure to meet a target - x number of new recruits each week.
P.S Granddad did manage to get to France the following year when he turned sixteen and, obviously, managed to escape getting himself killed.
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