Remembrance

I studied the First World War at school. We learnt about cause and effect, about strategy and battle, about men and boys pledging their lives simply because they believed it was right to do so. We visited the remains of the trenches at Ypres. We compared the lyrical romanticism of Brooke to the mud-drenched despair of Sassoon.

And yet, strangely, little of it touched me. I know less, academically speaking, about the Second World War, but I've always felt more in tune with it as a historical period. My grandparents lived through it (my dad's parents still had their former air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden when I was a kid in the 1970s) and my parents were born during it.

The First World War was just too remote, too temporally distant, for me to make a connection. I've watched the Remembrance Day parades, worn the poppies and admired the courage of its soldiers for years, but it's all felt rather theoretical. I gained slightly more empathy with the annual celebration of the eleventh hour after 9/11, but that's about it.

This year, it's different. I've been ramping up the family history research that has been a background interest of mine for decades. I've been trying to re-connect with my great-grandparents - only a couple of whom lived to see me born and none of whom I actually remember - to understand their lives a little better.

My dad has done a lot of research into his side of the family, but we know comparatively little about my mum's ancestors. From a genealogy point of view, it's fertile ground. Her parents' surnames are both very distinctive, so I decided that this would be a good place for me to start. So far it's been very interesting and I've learned a lot.

I didn't really expect to make much headway with her maternal grandmother, whose maiden name was Smith. My mum couldn't really tell me much about Clarissa's family other than that she'd had a sister who'd lived next door to her. However, numerous photographs survive, depicting a reticent but confident woman with a benevolent smile.

I did a bit of half-hearted research and it turned out to be easier than I anticipated to identify the administrative basics of her life. I found details of her birth and of her marriage. Sure enough, her younger sister turned up in searches too. And then, unexpectedly, a census return revealed the existence of two brothers.

My mum had never heard them mentioned. It's not unknown, of course, for children to die young. Nor would it be unusual for two young deaths in a family, even at the start of the twentieth century. However, John and Henry were 15 and 13 years old respectively in 1901. I discovered this late at night and puzzled over it before going to bed.

Over breakfast the following morning, my dad highlighted just how far I'd got wrapped up in the details without seeing the bigger picture. At the outbreak of the war in 1914, he noted, the two brothers would have been in their late twenties. It's quite likely that they went off to fight in the trenches and never returned.

It's still an unproven hypothesis, but one that this morning's annual parade past our house reminds me to pursue. Who knows what I'll discover. Even if the speculation turns out to be way off the mark, it's still given me a greater empathy for the marchers and the dwindling number of remaining veterans than I've had previously.

Posted by Hg on Sunday 11 November 2007 at 11:02.
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