Soldier Record

He was an "Old Contemptable" who surived the war having taken part in the retreat from Mons and won the Belgian Croix de Guerre for dressing wounded under heavy shell fire in Flanders. He had not been an ideal husband to my school teacher grandmother before 1914 but his heavy drinking and violence ( he had even threatened her with a pistol ) convinced her to separate from him after the war was over. So I never knew him and the family never spoke of him. Since visiting Ypres for the first time this year, I have come to understand the hell he must have endured and have begun to reconsider my view of him.