Uncle Bill

My Uncle Bill was killed in 1917 during WW1. He had joined the Leicestershire Regiment under age at 17 as did so many others in the big 1916 recruiting push. Then in 1917 came the dreaded telegram to announce his death, something which hung over his family for the rest of their lives. His brother, my Uncle George, was also in the army but such were the fortunes of war that he served in India and later after the war’s end in Ireland. I don’t think he was ever called upon to fire a shot in anger.

My mother, the youngest of the girls in the family, was at the opposite end of the age scale to Bill who was the eldest. Her main memory was being teased by Bill. She kept his cap badge all her life and it is an enduring regret that it was lost when her house was sold. George, who was close in age to Bill, felt his loss keenly. He named his son Bill in memory of his dead brother. It was his lasting regret that as Bill had no known grave so he couldn’t visit it and mourn.

There the matter rested. We knew only that Bill had been killed, presumably by a shell, while on a mission as battalion runner. Battlefield communication was difficult in WW1. Radio was primitive and cumbersome. Telephone had its wires cut with great frequency. The common method was to use a messenger which was the role Bill was in when killed.

I was shown Bill’s name on the Coalville war memorial but as with the rest of the family I thought this was the nearest we would come. In the nineties basing ourselves at some friends in Castrol France who lived in the Somme valley we spent several days touring the battlefield. In France Castrol was based at Peronne which is on the Somme. There a castle has been converted into a museum of the war. Locally it is called the historial. Their presentation takes exaggerated care to treat German, French and British alike

The cemeteries are immaculately kept. All British and Commonwealth have a simple headstone noting name, rank and unit with a small section for families to add anything they wish. Most moving are the headstones where the identity is unknown. Rudyard Kipling composed the simple inscription “Known unto God”. It is a slightly eerie experience on a  summers day to pass along a track by fields of waving wheat to come across a small walled cemetery of war dead.

Even now many dud shells and other ordnance are being found. These are dumped at the roadside for bomb disposal teams to remove and blow up. At various places mementoes are sold. I bought a shell cap and Annette the rusted remains of a rifle for use at school for drawing practice. I declined an itinerant selling a pair of “genuine” German binoculars as I doubted their provenance.

During our tour we visited Thiepval where the gigantic memorial to all the soldiers with no known grave is situated. To my surprise Bill Baker wasn’t listed in the many thousands of names. On my return to Britain I mentioned this to my cousin. He has the original War Office telegram and this gave Bill’s army number. Armed with this I approached the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. They quickly not only answered the puzzle but located Bill’s grave. He had been reburied after the war and the cemetery where he had been originally, closed. My family had lost track during this move. He is buried near Lens. The cemetery is less picturesque than the Somme valley being located in a former coal mining area where pit mounds are all around. I thought this was grimly appropriate for a boy from Coalville.

We visited on a grey day and I took photos for my cousins while reflecting it was a desolate place to end up. I also thought what a pity it was that Uncle George had never managed the small consolation of a visit having died a few years previously.

My father was 16 when the war ended. By then the carnage was well known. I can only imagine his feelings at being close to conscription age. He never spoke of it. In WW11 he was both rather old and, as a miner, in a reserved occupation. His only military service was in the Home Guard; this he didn’t take seriously not least because his Sergeant was his next door neighbour and good friend. What he later commented on was the all the extra shifts at work which may have contributed to his health breakdown a few years later.