Remembering the Great War and Eltham

George Bradford Simpson, 1918

The centenary of the outbreak of the Great War is fast approaching and already the books, films and documentaries have been appearing in ever greater number and will continue beyond August and right up the 100 anniversary of the armistice in 2018.

For most of us the conflict has long since passed out of living memory, the last of my uncles to have fought in that war died in 2000, his older brother in 1990 and my grandfather in 1970.

So in a very real sense as a piece of family history it is now a remote event, more so because none of them spoke of it.

And we have very few personal items from any of them.

I suspect that the same is true for most families which leaves us all looking at the official war photographs, reading the war poets and visiting the memorials as the closest way we will touch that past conflict.

So in an effort to address that and share what we all have I have decided to explore Eltham’s contribution to the Great War.

Unknown soldier, a friend of GBS, 1918

So here is the appeal, if you have anything and would like to share it with the rest of us I would like to see it along with the stories behind the material.

In my case over the next few months some of our family treasures will creep on to the blog.

There is one letter from my uncle Ferguson dated December 1918 which describes Cologne and of his unit’s preparations to cross the Rhine along with a Christmas card showing a group of his regiment decked out in kilts chasing the Germans.

We also have some photographs, my grandfather’s medals, and a metal note book case emblazoned with a German cross which is a reminder that some of my family fought on the “other side.”

Only the service records of my great uncle Roger have survived and these only because he served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and so were not destroyed during the blitz.

And that pretty much is the lot, unless you include the discharge papers of my grandfather who left the army in 1922 having served since 1916 and two letters from the War Ministry advising my great grandfather’s wife of his pension payments.

So there you have it, not so much a list of half forgotten letters and pictures but a rare record into the lives of those that lived the Great War.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Great War, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Great%20War