Marking the end of the fighting in World War I

The agreement between Germany and the Allied Powers was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of November 1918

Here’s a brooch I wear every Remembrance Sunday(I wore it this year at our Remembrance service in the village).

My paternal grandfather, grandpa Sam survived the infamous Battle of the Somme. A terrible ordeal resulting in over one million casualties.

I don’t think that our family or the country adequately acknowledged the sacrifices and trauma that all those soldiers suffered and endured in their nightmares for the rest of their lives.

I’ve written before about one of the fallen – a sheep farmer’s son from New Zealand, a boy who met my grandma Kate (who later became Sam’s second wife) when he was passing through London on his way to fight in France. Here are the three postcards – hand-embroidered silk postcards, that he sent Kate from “somewhere in France”.

That lad, thousands of miles from home, never returned from the blood stained, muddy fields of battle. I remember him too and grieve for his family who lost a precious son. Would my grandma have gone to live with him in New Zealand had he survived? Who knows but that chance was cut off and Kate and Sam survived into old age in an ill-tempered marriage that produced their only child, my father. Which is why I am able to write this Armistice Remembrance message today.

Rest in peace. We will not forget.