Family Myths

[Jean and Tonic]

If the stories in my my family are true ...... I have connections to a few well known people living today ........ but I haven't the money or the energy to prove anything, by sending for birth and marriage certs of a load of strangers ....

So until the census for the years up to 1950 come out .... the stories will have to lie dormant. ....... and I wont be around ......

Jean

[Penelope]

Redacted

[Christine in Herts]

I've just checked... my grandfather, Herbert R Christmas, and his elder brother, E Cecil R Christmas, both joined up on 5 July 1915 in London having travelled up from Southampton. My grandfather ended up in the South Yorkshires, and his elder brother in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps (the Arts & Crafts Bn).

Cecil "died of wounds" at Thiepval on the Somme on 7 October 1916 (his body was never recovered, and he is named on the great memorial there). The same day - also fighting on the Somme - Herbert was sufficiently badly wounded &/or affected by "neurasthenia" (i.e. shell-shock, I believe) that he was eventually invalided out. He rejoined the Army in the Labour Corps at the end of the war, hoping to find his brother's body for proper burial.

I found that both poignant and strangely resonant... as in frisson-making... that the two brothers should end up so close in the war, and both be very seriously injured on the same day, Cecil to the point of death.

Christine

[Southwick]

It just shows what a lottery it was, my great uncle, private Ralph Stephenson, 22nd Bn, Durham light infantry, of Tow Law, Durham. Died aged 26, 23 October 1916, remembered Thiepval memorial.

It was a family myth that he was only 16, and all of my family believed this until I obtained the certificates and found he also left a wife of less than 1 year.

[Penelope]

Redacted

[kylejustin]

spmeone upstairs likes your family very much!!!:D:D

[Christine in Herts]

It just shows what a lottery it was, my great uncle, private Ralph Stephenson, 22nd Bn, Durham light infantry, of Tow Law, Durham. Died aged 26, 23 October 1916, remembered Thiepval memorial.

It was a family myth that he was only 16, and all of my family believed this until I obtained the certificates and found he also left a wife of less than 1 year.

You can imagine how "He was killed in '16" might metamorphose into "He was killed aged 16"

Christine

[Penelope]

Redacted