My maternal Grandfather just missed becoming embroiled in the closing stages of the battle of the Somme. His Division had been due to relieve another on the Somme, but were diverted at the last moment to Salonika from where he sent the attached letter to my four year old mother. His parents had four sons in the Great War, two of whom were killed and the other two decorated. Cyril did get to see his family again, but it was destined to be the last time. Fairly shortly after returning to the Middle East in early 1918 he was killed in a little known action near to Amman.
Following my mother’s death some 20 odd years ago I found this letter among her papers. I also found that she had been writing to a representative of his regimental association who annually placed a wooden cross in the Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey for her each November. 90 years after my Grandfather’s death I and my son met this gentleman, to our great surprise it transpired that the unit in which Cyril had enlisted eventually morphed into the SAS and ‘Dagger’ was indeed a former member.
Things did not go well for the two children, some 10 years later their mother died, leaving them to be brought up by one of her sisters.(I was to become very close to my Great Aunt who lived to be 98). AFAIK the children did benefit from a charitable place at Christ’s Hospital School, however this meant that they were separated for most of the year since this was a boarding school, with the girls in Hertford and the boys in Horsham. In the way of things, my mother was to marry a man who had also lost his mother as a small child and he was to serve in WW2.
Several years ago I made up my mind that I would visit my Grandfather’s grave on the anniversary of his death: 30th march 1918; there is unfortunately one small problem at the moment, but I am resolute that it will not deter me. Cyril is buried in the Commonwealth War Grave Cemetery in … Damascus.
