So, a little story for Remembrance Weekend. Very personal, and completely true. Most of us will have something similar in our family whether we know it or not. If you know your own story, then what better time to tell it? If not, feel free to share this one while you search for your own. Courage and duty under fire is what we usually think about, and that’s noble and good, but there’s more to remembrance than that.
When I was researching my family history, I always had the impression we'd escaped WW1 untouched - just one minor fighter ace really.
So I was looking at the 1911 census, and discovered two sons to my great Aunt Edith from Bristol whom no-one had remarked upon before. I went onto the War Graves Commission site, and discovered that both of them had died in the war. Teenagers both, just out of school.
I did some more digging and found their records. One was fairly straightforward, clearly dead, there was a body and a funeral etc. The other was just "missing". Nothing more tangible, though the assumption was that he was blown to bits or buried by shells, seemed clear he was dead. But no closure.
And then I found in the national archives a wonderful set of letters between Edith and the War Office, in which as the correspondence continued it became clear that faint hope was ossifying into desperation and finally resignation and loss. The final letter closes with the lines "yet I see it must be so", and as she accepted her son's death, you could feel Edith's heart breaking. 1919.
What was worse was that she also lost her husband during the war, not from conflict, but from TB. He was a vicar in Bristol.
So within a few years, she had lost two sons and a husband. Edith Rhoda Bell nee Linnell, just one name amongst all those millions whose lives were stunted by the tragedy of war.
So anyway, I was surprised a few years later while sorting out my father's effects after his death to find that same name signed on a painting he’d had hanging in his hall forever.
My family were artists, and Edith Bell was a talented amateur. The picture is of a glorious Spring bluebell wood. I opened it up to remount it, and found it had been framed in Spring 1913. It was a painting of the last Spring before her world was torn apart, the last gleaming of hope for a happy and contented future.
I have many family mementoes, some quite valuable paintings. but it would be that painting I would save in a fire. Because of what it represents: the loss of a generation, and the heartbreak of those who suffered the losses.
I can get quite tearful thinking about this, and I never knew Edith or her other descendants - two daughters who, incidentally, died spinsters as did so many girls of their generation for want of living men to marry. So you multiply this grief up even as it dissipates over nearly a century, and you realise the ghastly sum of the grief of the millions affected directly, and it's unbearable.
Truly unbearable.
And then I found in the national archives a wonderful set of letters between Edith and the War Office, in which as the correspondence continued it became clear that faint hope was ossifying into desperation and finally resignation and loss. The final letter closes with the lines "yet I see it must be so", and as she accepted her son's death, you could feel Edith's heart breaking. 1919.
What was worse was that she also lost her husband during the war, not from conflict, but from TB. He was a vicar in Bristol.
So within a few years, she had lost two sons and a husband. Edith Rhoda Bell nee Linnell, just one name amongst all those millions whose lives were stunted by the tragedy of war.
So anyway, I was surprised a few years later while sorting out my father's effects after his death to find that same name signed on a painting he’d had hanging in his hall forever.
My family were artists, and Edith Bell was a talented amateur. The picture is of a glorious Spring bluebell wood. I opened it up to remount it, and found it had been framed in Spring 1913. It was a painting of the last Spring before her world was torn apart, the last gleaming of hope for a happy and contented future.
I have many family mementoes, some quite valuable paintings. but it would be that painting I would save in a fire. Because of what it represents: the loss of a generation, and the heartbreak of those who suffered the losses.
I can get quite tearful thinking about this, and I never knew Edith or her other descendants - two daughters who, incidentally, died spinsters as did so many girls of their generation for want of living men to marry. So you multiply this grief up even as it dissipates over nearly a century, and you realise the ghastly sum of the grief of the millions affected directly, and it's unbearable.
Truly unbearable.
