Sussex History

I still have the cap that my Grandpa wore during the Great War. Once I wore it when I played soldiers. I have his medals, spurs, even his artillery observation notebook.

Search through the pages and you find a hand-drawn picture of his sister, inked onto the yellowing pages on a day long ago, near the carnage of the Western Front.

But Grandpa was lucky; he came back. Many did not. In total, Britain lost almost 890,000 men between 1914 and 1918, mainly in the trenches of France and Belgium.

The Sussex Regiment alone lost over 6,800 men during the war. In Surrey, 6000 men died fighting for the East Surrey Regiment.

In Sussex, the writer Rudyard Kipling lost his only son, Jack, in 1915 at the Battle of Loos.

His loss reflected that of thousands of families across these two counties. In his poem ' 'My Boy Jack', the creator of the Just So Stories wrote:

'Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.'

Henry Allingham, Britain's oldest man and a First World War veteran, has just published a book about his long life. He remembers those who lost their lives.
He wept at the launch of his book.

"I am here today not for me, but for all those who gave their lives on our behalf," he said.

How do you remember?

"Thank goodness for those people. I could never thank them enough. If it wasn't for them, our privileges would have been destroyed. We probably would not even be here now.'

Henry's memories don't fade. But, as this November sees the 90th anniversary of the end of World War One, we're looking for your family memories. What's your Great War connection?

Have you got a story in your family about a relative who served? Like this one, for example, about Bexhill man Len Smith, who went into No Man's Land to draw German positions.

Tell your family story. Get in touch with us using the form on this page.