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Originally Posted by Rufus
Its strange to think this old tin box went to France in WW1 and thankfully came back along with my grandad. Its nearly 100 years old now. I've no idea what he did. He died when I was young and nobody ever spoke about it. I have kept important documents in it for years.It helps me remember. We even used to have his bayonet once. |
That's really nice. To anyone else it's just an old tin box, but to you it's sort of priceless, a link to your past.
You might be able to find out more about your grandad by searching ancestry.co.uk. It's free to use at your library.
I've been doing some family history recently and found my grandfather's discharge papers online (15 pages worth) which included medical records and medal records. I've also found out more about the division he was attached to in Salonika and first-hand accounts of the conditions they lived in and battles they fought. More soldiers died of malaria during the Salonika campaign than from fighting. My grandfather contracted malaria and suffered ill-health for the rest of his life. He died more than 20 years before I was born, he was aged just 42.
A couple of the scans from my grandfather's discharge papers:
