Soldier Record

I first heard of John Claude from his sister Martha Raine my paternal grandmother. I was about 7 years old and we were sat in her lovely Victorian parlor in East Hagbourne watching this tiny round screen b&w TV of the Cenotaph Memorial service. She started crying which was most unusual as she was a powerful and stoic woman who I had never seen frail or vulnerable. I went and sat on her lap and asked what was wrong? She then told me of her lovely brother who thought war would be fun and a chance to travel beyond their hard working life of toil in the rubber factory. He went off and was never seen again. She knew he went to Gallipoli and thought he was killed there but Regimental records and CWG show he was killed in April 1916 in the attempts to relieve Kut in Mesopotamia.

Shortly before grandma died she gave me John's medals and said they were for me to remember him as he had no children and I would have loved to play with him as he was such fun.