I
found this image on line – recently added to the collection at Ancestry.com
under UK Army Register of Soldier’s effects.
This
is a record of my uncle Harry, killed at Hohenzollern Redoubt in 1915 – a battle
for a fucking useless mound – where Harry and his friends were ordered to run
uphill into machine gun fire.
This
from Wikipedia:
The final British assault on 13 October failed and resulted
in 3,643 casualties, mostly in the first few minutes. In the British Official
History, J. E. Edmonds wrote that "The fighting [from 13–14 October] had
not improved the general situation in any way and had brought nothing but
useless slaughter of infantry".
Then, a year later his father gets paid
whatever was due. I imagine the accompanying letter read something like:
“Yo! George
Thanks for your lad, here’s ten quid. Got
any more?”
At least the record keeping was accurate.
One hundred years ago, and I weep for
this senselessness.
2 comments:
My grandfather was wounded at Spottsylvania; his brother killed. After he left the hospital he was sent back, and and was wounded so badly at Gettysburg they had to muster him out. I've looked at these battlefields and was sickened. I can only think, if generals must fight, issue stones to throw, nothing more. I don't know what else to say. Thank you for posting the voucher and Uncle Harry's story.
I stay right out of the annual drinks-and-tears fests.
One great uncle was shipped home from the WWI battlefields, severely mentally f'd up.He ended his days in an asylum because then, they did not understand how to treat what they'd caused.
In the next Big One...another uncle came home, married his sweetheart, fathered two daughters, seemed a jolly fellow.I can still recall his nightmares and screams.
And they were the ones who survived...
I feel your family's pain.
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