Soldier Record

Pictured on his wedding in May 1914. James was only in his cottage with my Grandmother, Eliza, for a short time before he was off to war as Private 17623 in the 11th Gloucestershire Regiment. He never returned. But unlike his brother Harry or his brother-in-law John, he did not die on active service, in fact he never got farther than training. The Gloucestershire poet Ivor Gurney described the cold, wet, hell of training on Salisbury Plain with inadequate clothing, shelter or adequate food. James did not have a strong constitution, and caught pneumonia from which he soon died, in hospital in London. He is buried at war grave 105 in the Brompton Cemetery.

As a child, I was given the task of burning my grandparents war correspondence after my grandmother's death. I only wish I had known what I was destroying.