Remembrance

Princes Gardens, Edinburgh

My grandmother, born in November 1899, was a twin. Her brother, caught up in the war fever of 1915 London, although legally too young, enlisted aged 16. Once in France, he realised what he had done and wrote to his mother begging her to get him out. She could do nothing. He did not return, although any details seemed sparse.

Almost 90 years later, I turned to the internet for more information. He died in a military hospital in France, in the autumn of 1916, of 'wounds'. He was just 17. He is buried in a war cemetry in Amiens. In the military records, his date of birth (although not his place of birth), is recorded as 'unknown'. Within that cemetry there also a number of others also 'unknown'. Even in death the military was not prepared to admit they had cynically recruited and used underage boys.