Soldier Record

He was wounded and de-mobbed in 1918 after receiving a shrapnel wound to his left wrist. He kept a kept a war diary from his enlistment on Monday 22nd February 1915 for every day and after his death on 6th October 1985, my mother found the diaries, some still caked with mud from the trenches. She methodically and tirelessly typed them out onto foolscap sheets and a few years ago I scanned them all in to the computer. The original diaries were donated to the Imperial War Museum in London with our wishes for them to ultimately come to the Northwest War Museum in Manchester, where he was born and lived the first part of his life in Ashton-under-Lyne, as did his father before him. He is still sadly missed and I only wish I had more opportunities to discuss his experiences with him but, like most soldiers who experienced the Great War, he spoke very little about them so his diaries are a Godsend and make fascinating reading.