Family History Fun: Poignant Tales from WW1 - Week 3 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.

This week's prompt from "52 Ancestors" asks to consider what this story means to me.

We are at a dangerous point in our world history with so much war and conflict dominating our news headlines.

I take a look back at my ancestors, who fought in World War 1 to remind us what war entails with suffering of those fighting and and the anguish those families back home.

"I had to assist the wounded at a dressing station and stuck to it for about 40 hours. It's blooming hard work being a stretcher bearer in the field."

These were the words of my great uncle George Danson (1894-1916), written three weeks before he was killed on the Somme

One of the many embroidered cards sent from Flanders by her sons to my widowed great grandmother, Maria Danson, nee Rawcliffe.

George Danson was the youngest of eight sons (surviving infancy) of James Danson and Maria Rawcliffe of Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire. Born in 1894, he was followed three years later by the birth of an only daughter Jennie. The photographs and memorabilia here come from my great aunts coillection.

Young George

George (above) was the favourite uncle of my mother and aunt, and they had fond memories of him, perhaps because he was nearest to them in age and took on the role of the big brother. I can see why in the photograph of him above. George worked on W.H. Smith bookstalls at different railway stations in Lancashire and West Yorkshire.

George joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1916 and I was lucky enough to trace his service record on www.ancestry.co.uk as many were destroyed in the Second World War. On his enlistment, George's medical report stated he was 5'3" tall, weighed 109 lbs. (under 8 stone), with size 34 1/2 chest and he wore glasses - so a slight figure to be a stretcher bearer in the turmoil of war, carrying men who were badly wounded or dead.

Also amongst the family papers were two letters written on headed paper of the British Expeditionary Force. A letter of 19th March 1916 to his eldest brother Robert said:

"I will tell you one thing it is no easy job the army life today and I am of the opinion as most of the chaps are here they won't be sorry when it is all over."

The second letter of 23rd August 1916 was to Frank, the brother nearest to him in age:

"At present we are about 8 miles behind the firing line. I had to assist the wounded at a dressing station and stuck to it for about 40 hours. It's blooming hard work being a stretcher bearer in the field. On Friday I was in a big bombardment and will say it was like a continual thunder and lightening going off. As I write there are blooming big guns going off abut 50 yards away every few minutes.

Don't I wish that all of us could get home. Wouldn't that be great, lad, there's a good time coming and I hope we shall all be there to join in."

Sadly it was not to be.

Three weeks later, and a week after his 22nd birthday, George was killed on 16th September 1916 at the Battle of the Somme, and buried in the Guards Cemetery, Les Boeufs, near Albert.

A report in the local paper

A photograph, sent to his widowed mother, of George's initial grave. It conveys in a stark way the reality of war amid the mud and blood that George must have experienced - and contrasts with the pristine white of the more lasting memorials that we recognise today.

George remembered on Poulton War Memoral along with his brother John who died in 1917.

I have written about George before on my blog, but it is such a poignant tale, that I make no apologies for telling it again.

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This is just one story in my family history but there is much more to tell another time -

My great uncle John Danson who in 1917 committed suicide whilst in army training, leaving his young daughter an orphan.
My great uncle Arthur Weston killed at Gallipoli in 1915, aged 35, leaving a wife and two young children with her expecting their third child.
My cousin's grandfather Edward Stuart Ingram Smith - a broken man following his war experiences which led to his broken marriage.
My husband's great uncle ~ died Fredrick Donaldson killed the very same day as George above. He is remembered on the Thiepval Monument in France - the- largest British battle memorial in the world. On Portland stone, piers are engraved the names of over 72,000 men who have no known grave and who were lost in the Somme battles between July 1916 and March 1918.