Telegrams and Tools – Discovering the stories of family through objects.

By Ellen O'Brien - “PhD student, book lover and tea addict, I spend my days researching and writing, with help from my bunny George. History is not quite so visible in Australia as in England… but it's there if you know where to look!”

I sat for a moment in her chair, and let the dust settle. It was cool in the house, but out in the shed I could hear Mum and Tom wrestling with four decades of accumulated dust and debris. I wondered if Rose was somewhere nearby, watching us dismantle her home of fifty years? Sitting in the silence of the front room– it still retained the air of pristine sanctity that she maintained all her life– I thought that perhaps she wouldn’t mind. There was nothing mercenary about our sorting through her possessions, no siblings squabbling over jewellery (her frugal life didn’t allow for any), or the irreverence of a removal company.

© Ellen O'Brien

It is interesting to consider a life through objects, don’t you think? From a scientific perspective, they reveal things about a person or society. To an archaeologist, a fragment of pottery is as a good as a page from someone’s cookbook, or a weather report! Certainly, objects have informed my own understanding of history: ancient Egypt, to me, looks like the sarcophagi in the British Museum. But on a more intimate level, they are the mementoes we have collected on our way through life and chosen to keep around us, to look at, to touch, to remember everyday. What do these objects reveal about a person, and the joys and tragedies they have experienced? When Rose died, some of her possessions had an obvious significance– others only made sense because of the stories she told. Objects can tell us so much about the recently departed, but they also invite us into the lives of an entire family and extended family. This is what I recently experienced. That week, through the objects left in Rose’s house, we were able to trace my own family’s journey, from the harsh and isolated wheatbelt town of Kellerberrin, to the fringes of Perth in the 1960s, to London in the present day.

Allow me to explain. My father and his cousin Tom grew up a mere 127 kilometres apart in the towns of Corrigin and Kellberrin– pretty close by Australian wheatbelt standards– but didn’t actually meet until the 1990s, when Tom brought his small, English children to Australia for the first time. Somewhere in the depths of our family history, lies a dispute between brothers Patrick, my grandfather, and Connor, Roses’ husband and Tom’s Dad. It was tied up with the family farm at Kellerberrin, and which of the boys would inherit… we think. Rose, for many years the only remaining witness, was renowned for her ability to talk the leg off a chair, but was always uncharacteristically tight lipped about the matter. When Tom returned to Perth with his children in the 90s, they found some ready-made playmates in my brother and I, and more importantly, that no memory of this family feud existed. Perhaps Rose did us a great favour by keeping mum all those years, for Amy and I are now the best of friends, and in that peculiar way families have, have discovered that although we live 9000-odd miles apart, we have a great many things in common.  

© Ellen O'Brien

This is how I ended up, one warm January arvo, in Rose’s shed. Chock-a-block with oilcans and newspapers from the 70s, it was there we found Connor’s old tools. Thick with rust, they were clearly straight off the farm: the average suburban gardener doesn’t have much use for a plough chisel, or a set of imperial measurement spanners. Hanging on the wall was an old horse bit attached to a decaying bridle. Green with age, Tom extricated it from its cradle of spider webs. ‘That must have been the old horse’s… they kept him at the farm after motorised tractors came in… I remember Mum talking about him.’

© Ellen O'Brien

A self-confessed bibliophile, I found that I was drawn to the bookshelf in the ‘good room.’ The ubiquitous gold-edged Reader’s Digest titles were interspersed with some more telling items: Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex, surprising, perhaps, for a staunchly Catholic widow, and a collection of medical books, Yourself and Your Body, The Home Physician and A Husband’s Guide to Marriage. Were they a throwback to Rose’s nursing days, or an effort to negotiate what was by all accounts a difficult marriage in the lonely climate of the 1950s and 60s?

© Ellen O'Brien

In spite of these difficulties, there was evidence of female friendship. We unearthed a box of telegrams received on the birth of Tom in 1956, all written on identical General Post Office baby telegram forms, decorated with balloons and a teddy bear. ‘Congratulations on the birth of a darling baby boy, Love Patrick and Marjorie,’ read one in my grandmother’s handwriting. They were both, after all, raising boys in the austere conditions of a 1950’s farming community. With undertones of shared experience and affection, the note quietly acknowledges the negotiation of family ties and the lifestyle they shared.

That first day, Tom told us about his adventures in Africa, where he met Jane, the mother of his children. The ordinance maps and 78” records in his well-preserved teenage bedroom told the story of his diploma in surveying, his fascination with Perth’s growing music scene in the 80s, and his eventual escape to Notting Hill, Africa, Europe and finally, Milton Keynes. His tiny school hat –Aquinas College– was discarded as a symbol of the religion of his parents, rejected utterly by Tom after his experiences at the prestigious but close-minded boys’ school.

© Ellen O'Brien

Wrapped in newspaper like a piece of battered cod, in a box under my own bed, is a set of art deco teacups, which I hope one day will grace the bridal tea or house-warming party of my cousin Amy, who resembles her grandmother Rose in both waif-like build and resilience of mind and opinion. Our family has come full circle, from the strife over a dusty paddock in Kellerberrin, to enduring international friendship that has bloomed through the days of letter writing, to email, to Facebook and Snapchat.

In our week in Rose’s house, I learned about history through objects. It struck me as a shame that many of the stories were lost, and all we had left were these physical fragments and our own speculations. At risk of sounding like a community public service announcement, it is so important to connect with the older members of your family.  Ask, and let and them pass you their memories with their own weathered hands. After all, the real value of an heirloom is the story attached to it. Rose’s old Singer Sewing machine, now in my own mum’s expert care, was built in Strathclyde in 1949. It’s a beautiful piece of machinery, and surprisingly still works. But where did Rose get it? Was it a gift? Did she make her wedding dress with it? Either way, we have started making new memories with it. I can tell my children how, not knowing what it was, I tried to get the lid of with a rusty screwdriver, which gave way before the lid did. Or that a few mornings ago, our friend Peter hopped down the driveway (yes, he had a broken foot) and tested the motor by grabbing the edge of the sink and sticking a spanner in the socket. Electrical engineering at its finest (ahem). What about the women in Strathclyde who worked at the Singer factory? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know what they were doing in 1949? For many, German bombs had decimated their homes just eight years previously, yet they were able to make these beautiful, intricate machines that travelled to the other side of the world. Such an unobtrusive little device, sitting quietly under its lid on the table, but what stories it could tell.

Everything Comes Full Circle: The journey from family history to a PhD.

To most 24 year old’s a Sunday spent in a cemetery looking for the grave of a close relative you’ve only very recently learnt existed, wouldn’t be the most favourable option. But not me.  And this is exactly what I found myself doing a few weeks ago – the most recent development in a journey that for me began a decade ago. “If it hadn’t been for you and that initial letter 10 years ago, this wouldn’t have been a possibility” – a fact I was reminded of as we sat and had lunch at a family gathering last month. It was only in that moment I was reminded of where it all began and how long ago. All of a sudden I felt very reflective. Everything had come full circle.

My Grandad died 10 years ago this year and it was hearing his eulogy at the funeral that left me with a lot of unanswered questions, many of which I wished I’d had opportunity to ask him when he was alive. He was quiet and reserved man and so I suspect my questions would have gone unanswered. But all of a sudden he felt like a stranger to me, not my Grandad - a man who’d led an extraordinary life and yet one that I knew very little about. So my way of grieving and of fixing that became to find out as much about him as possible, from those who had known him better than I did; those who could recall his childhood, his military service and work.

Cue a flurried exchanging of letters with members of my family from all across the world, some of whom I’ve since had chance to meet and get to know; trips to archives where I would have my first on site researching experiences; and hours spent hours poring over census records, birth marriage and death certificates and all manner of other things, to find whatever it was I was looking for. It soon became about more than piecing together my Grandad’s life and I was charting the entire family history – on both my paternal and maternal side! A mammoth task and not typical teenage behaviour it has to be said!

I had entered into a world that completely enthralled me. I’ve probably said before that the study of history is much more than a hobby for me and this is exactly why. It’s become part of who I am and has helped me to understand where I come from and the people I’ve descended from. What began as shear curiosity and a desire for answers has blossomed into this incurable thirst for knowledge about the past; to learn about the lives people led and to understand the times in which they lived, whether my family or not.  

But at times, the personal nature of my family history research has been difficult and has led to some shocking discoveries and rather difficult questions. Every family has its skeletons I know, but you’d be amazed how many more appear when you start enquiring and poking around. I’d like to use recent events as one such example but it’s both a complicated story and a delicate one, so I will refrain from saying too much. Just that a recent effort to locate the grave of a close relative, a sibling of my cousin, bought to light the life of another sibling, one we had no knowledge of prior to that enquiry.

As the first person to be notified of this news I found it quite unsettling. It was as if I’d made an intrusion into a private family matter, I think because of the proximity. This all happened within living memory and that hadn’t happened too often with other aspects of the research. As you can imagine this ‘discovery’ has prompted many new questions and been surrounded with emotional responses, but where it goes from here is a decision for the immediate family. We did however go and find the grave and were able to I hope, offer my cousin some degree of closure and, in a way, re-acknowledge and re-claim the two children as members of our family.

My Dad has jokingly referred to me as “guardian of the family information” – and it sounds odd, but in way I do now feel a responsibility to make sure things are recorded and that everyone is remembered and talked about. Incidentally, this weekend marks the passing of my other Grandad and in a conversation with my Grandma about the difficulty of talking about passed loved ones I was struck by her remark that “to not talk about them is to deny them and we mustn’t do that”. And we mustn’t; death really shouldn’t be a taboo subject- we should talk about people that have passed and remember them as often as we can. But I digress.

I wanted to draw on this example because what made this whole experience more poignant for me was that it coincided almost day for day with the news that I would be doing my PhD come September. It’s been a decade since I began on this ‘journey’ (I know the word is so over used but I don’t know what else to call it) and I’m so grateful for where it’s bought me so far. Not only have the discoveries and the knowledge I’ve gained through my family history research helped to give me roots and to construct my identity, but they’ve given me a hobby and, I hope, the beginnings of an career doing something that I really enjoy. It’s therefore been hard to separate these two threads as it’s because of the family history research that I’m on the road to becoming a historian. And so everything seems to have come full circle.

I’m sorry for the reflective nature of this blog – it’s not as entertaining, I suspect, as some of the others which usually offer reviews or rants, as I suspect some would describe them. I just thought I’d share this rather emotional and somewhat exceptional journey with you – one that’s headed into a new chapter and one that I am sure, will only continue to unfold.

“...In hearts at peace, under an English heaven”: Cowleaze Woods and its secret tragedy

Elle:

 

I based the name of my blog on the childhood game ‘I-spy’ because I really believe if you are tuned in to the world around you, all you have to do is look and you will find something that has historical significance or a tale of the past to tell. This belief has certainly held true and last weekend provided a great example, for we stumbled (in my case literally) upon a memorial in a place I never would have imagined to find one. 

I spent the weekend with friends in Oxford and we decided to head for a country walk in an area of woodland known as Cowleaze Wood, famous for its annual blanketing of bluebells. As we strolled along, Katy - Oxfordshire resident and our ‘guide’ to the local area - recalled how in the very woodland we were walking there was a memorial to the crew of a Halifax bomber LW579 that crashed in the wood when returning from a bombing attack on Nuremburg during the Second World War. I was extremely surprised by this revelation not least because shortly after this recollection she proceeded to point out the very place and the memorial that has been erected in memory of the 7 crew members who died.

The tragic event is marked by an understated memorial stone and small information panel, with additional information having been attached to a nearby tree - I’m guessing by a local history enthusiast or perhaps relative of one of the casualties. The information panel reads as follows:

‘On 31^st March 1944 the Halifax bomber LW 579 crashed here, killing all seven members of the crew. Their names are inscribed on the stone. They had been on a bombing raid on Nuremburg in East Germany, one of the 1000 planes that took part in the raid.

Contrary to the weather forecast there was brilliant moonlight that night and the planes were attacked by German fighter planes and anti-aircraft guns. Tragically, having survived thousands of miles flown across Europe, they crashed here when they were so nearly home.’

As I sat at work on Friday, watching the commemorative ceremony at the cenotaph and honoured the two minutes silence in remembrance of V.E. Day, I couldn’t help but think about these men. Seven men whose individual contributions and deaths are included in the total figure of military and civilian victims of the Second World War (c.450,000 in Britain). It is all too easy to forget the individual sacrifice in favour of the national one but this memorial made me stop and think about each person as an individual, something I, and I’m sure many of us don’t do often enough beyond perhaps, our own families.

It was quite an odd experience being stood in that woodland. In a way it felt quite haunting, walking upon the very ground which had witnessed this catastrophe. It was the middle of nowhere and I was left wondering, how far was the nearest hospital? Would help have come in time to have given the crew at least some hope? Was it immediate or did some time pass before the site was discovered? They were all rather morbid questions that began running through my mind and questions that I’ve never really found myself considering before. With the legacy of the Blitz for example, you don’t tend to see sites where the destruction is still evident and so aren’t really provoked to ask these sorts of questions. The 70+ years since have paved the way for redevelopment and rebuilding and there are very few ‘battlefields’ on UK shores. The only places I can think of that really evoke similar feelings for me here in the UK, are military cemeteries such as Brookwood; sites which bring the enormity of the sacrifice and cost of war home in a really powerful way.

The memorial in Cowleaze wood was in a place that you would least expect to find one, unless you are unfamiliar with the event of course. I suppose, rather naively, I’d never really considered before that sites like this exist in Britain and I think perhaps that’s what I found so poignant about the site. That, and also the fact that it hasn’t been forgotten and that the crew are still remembered – the wreaths and crosses by the memorial providing striking evidence of that.

Finding this memorial prompted me to again look beyond what I know of World War Two and to consider another angle of the conflict; the military casualties lost on home soil. It was rather overwhelming to think that in this small area of Oxfordshire woodland, these men are still remembered for the sacrifice they made in defending our country, in such an intimate and understated way.

Katy: http://publichistorymusings.blogspot.co.uk/

As I have said in other blog posts, history tends to jump out at you when you least expect it. Despite walking in Cowleaze Woods from a young age, it was only a year and a half ago that my family told me about the memorial to the men who tragically died while returning home from their mission. I had drafted a blog post immediately after this discovery but deadlines and Christmas festivities meant I postponed its release. I am grateful I did as it has led to this collaboration of views and insights (plus double the exposure!)

I am unsure as to how many people local or otherwise know of the memorial; it certainly is off the beaten track for dog walkers and nature lovers. As a ‘local’, the memorial reminds me that the Second World War did not just happen abroad or in the cities; my place of picnics and den building is a public site of commemoration dedicated to those who tragically died on their way home. 
At the memorial itself, there is an information sheet pinned to a tree detailing the events of the night. I have summarised what it says here:

The MH-V crew had already survived nineteen missions in which 529 heavy-duty bombers had been lost. For this mission, Sergeant Kelly replaced Flying Officer K King, who usually flew with the crew, as King had come down with a case of shingles. This would prove a blessing in disguise as it spared him from the fate of his comrades. The crew were returning from their mission and were aiming to reach RAF Benson for an emergency landing, suggesting it may have been damaged. Either the aircraft succumbed to the damage sustained or the pilot was unaware of the height of the hill, resulting in a collision with the trees and the craft’s explosion on impact at 5:20 am on 31^st March 1944.

Information about the crew added to a tree

Without this additional information present at the site, the details of the crash would remain unknown. Despite being graphic, this information helps us to imagine the destruction, which occurred in the peaceful woods. More importantly, it allows us to feel connected to the men who died rather than simply seeing a stone monument for those long gone. 

As Elle has said, it is easy to focus on the national struggle rather than considering an individual’s experience. While watching the BBC’s Remembering Victory, I was struck by Bruce Forsyth’s story of the distinct lack of closure experienced by his family due to the label ‘missing’ assigned to his brother in the RAF. It has made me think of those families who survived; having to adjust to the spare chair at the dinner table, knowing that no more treasured letters would arrive. While we look back and celebrate VE Day, let’s take a moment to reflect how close to home tragedy struck and how fortunate we are to live in a time of relative peace in this country.

Blanket of Bluebells

The Royal Pavilion, Brighton – A memory shattered as the truth is learned!

The Royal Pavilion, Brighton
Authors Own Photo

As I’ve probably mentioned before when writing this blog, my family history is something I’ve done a lot of research into and is an ongoing project for me. And one of the things that has really developed out of that work is the connection I feel to the city of Brighton. It’s where my Dad grew up and where his family have lived for generations; where as a child I spent time visiting family and somewhere, over the years, I’ve heard a lot. But in actual fact I haven’t spent a lot of time in the city. I visited the church where my grandparents were married and viewed the register, and had my first archive experience there, but what I know is largely second hand.

So a couple of weekends ago, as part of a trip to visit family, my Dad and I made a stop at Brighton Pavilion, for it had been on my “wish list” to revisit for a while. I had been before, but many moons ago and I couldn’t remember that much about it, asides from it being Indian in influence, having connections with the Indian Army during the WW1 and, I thought, had been a much loved summer residence of Queen Victoria. Like St Paul’s it’s a building I am just fascinated by and fondly remember, how around Christmas time, we’d ask that Dad drive back through the city, rather than over the hills, so that we could see the city’s Christmas lights and the Pavilion – it was majestic and exotic, especially when lit at night. Even now, something about it just captures my imagination and as we were heading down anyway, I asked if we could make a pit stop and revisit.

The thing is, the visit shattered all the memories I had – especially learning that Queen Victoria had sold it as she didn’t really like it, owing to the lack of privacy it availed and the fact it wasn’t large enough to house her growing family. I mean how did I get it that wrong? I can only think I had confused it with Osbourne House, but who knows! And, far from being Indian in influence, the inside is completely Oriental and its history is more centred on George IV and to an extent, William IV, than it is on Queen Vic. In that sense, the visit was incredibly worthwhile for it corrected those misunderstandings I had and allowed me to reconnect with a building that’s history fascinates me. 

So what did I make of it? Well, I was really impressed by the audio guide that is available in multiple languages for all visitors and they were really modern and easy to use. The information was clear, informative and in bite sized chunks which could be expanded upon by choosing further options. In actual fact, I’m not normally a fan of audio guides, I would rather make my own way around and read the information panels, but on this occasion welcomed the additional device, and actually without it I would have struggled to learn anything - the audio guide being the main way in which the historical narrative is told to visitors.

I just love this building!

At first, I wasn’t sure if I was a fan of this approach, but having spent some time thinking about it, I reached the conclusion that it is perhaps the best option the Royal Pavilion could offer its visitors. Let me explain my train of thought. What I was particularly struck by during our visit was how many of the artefacts and items on display are actually on loan from various collections or have been donated to the Pavilion by patrons. There are few original fixtures on display and as I learnt that, I have to admit it did lose some of its wow factor for me.  
It is still an impressive building with an interesting history, but that atmosphere is evoked more by the sense of place than what it contains. It made me think of Avebury Manor actually, another site where the place itself has significance, and the items, although not original, are given meaning because of the power that sense of place creates. Had I not been informed by reading the guidebook that these items had been donated, I wouldn’t have known any different; they fit in and they recreate the image of what you’d expect it to look like. So I don’t know why knowing of the origin of items changes that, it just did for me.

So the fact that the information is given through the audio guide, which can talk specifically about the building, its occupants and what it would have been like, gives you the history the Pavilion, rather than of the objects which have alternate origins. If the more mainstream approach of  using object labels and the like had been adopted, I think the history the Pavilion would have been lost against the history of individual items and not been what visitors walked away having learnt about. 

There is also a fair bit of renovation underway, The Saloon in particular. The curatorial team have gone to some lengths to explain this and have included a display which informs visitors about aspects of the process. But again, when reading the Guidebook, I was surprised to learn that this room has been under renovation since 2009. That’s six years and it is still a way off being completed. And this comes after other periods of serious renovation. For example an arson attack in 1975 destroyed much of the music room which then underwent a huge restoration effort, only then, when near completion, to suffer at the hands of the Great Storm of 1987, which saw stone work fall through the roof and require a repeat of the process.

Majestic!

So much time and care has clearly been put into the Pavilion and its restoration has clearly been a labour of love. I heard it described as “the heart of the city”, and the fact that such huge efforts have been made to restore it to its current state is amazing. I think for a community to be so attached to such a landmark is really admirable in this day and age – it’s a piece of history really cared about by the people of Brighton, the precedent for which began when the city bought the Pavilion from Queen Victoria in 1850 for the sum of £50,000.

What I also really found interesting was the information about the Pavilion’s use as the Indian Military hospital during WW1 and couldn’t help but pick up the guide on it. I think I’ve posted a blog about the Chattri before (another Brighton landmark) and it’s all connected – the Chattri being the memorial unveiled in 1921 by the Prince of Wales, to all Indian soldiers who died in Brighton. This aspect of the Pavilion’s history is one I also find interesting because of a family story that claims our Great Great Granddad West, a concertina player, entertained the Indian soldiers when it was Military Hospital. Now how true that is I have no idea, but it has sparked and sustained my interest in the Pavilion over the years.

I am really glad we took the opportunity to revisit the Pavilion but it does go to show how you take different things away from places when you revisit and that there is much more to be learnt that can be done in a single trip. It was only last month that I admitted my apathy to the Imperial War Museum, but perhaps it’s because I’ve been comparatively recently and not enough time has passed to allow me to visit and connect with it again. In the case of the Pavilion, this is certainly what happened. I had these memories of it from childhood which were completely incorrect but they had caused me to remember it fondly and encouraged me to visit again, where this time I learned more accurate information about the Pavilion and how it fits into history.

There are other places on my wish list I hope to revisit for similar reasons; nostalgia, curiosity and seeking blog inspiration among them! I just wonder, can childhood memory stand the test of time, or will it fall short, as it did here?

Medals: An act of remembrance or better best forgotten?

Medal Index Card of one of my relatives.

Within the National Archive there are over 5 million medal index cards for soldiers and other military personnel who served between 1914 and 1920. This included most British army officers, Indian Army personnel, British Army nurses, Royal Flying Corps personnel, Royal Naval division personnel and some civilians. 5 million cards, issuing any number of the medals issued to those who served in one of the most difficult periods in modern British history. And that is a figure which excludes those many thousands of records for the service men and women from the Second World War.

I started thinking about this topic the other day when I caught a few minutes of one of these day time auction shows and on there, they were selling a collection of WW1 medals. These medals had no connection to the person who was selling them and it got me to thinking what a sad state of affairs that is. These medals represent the courage and sacrifice made by our generation of grandfathers and great grandfathers, and yet here they are, detached from anyone with a personal connection and being sold off to the bidder of the highest price.

Perhaps it’s a rather sentimental view to take, but it is one I find quite difficult to understand. In the year in which we mark the centenary of this life changing event, to think that so many medals have been disregarded and have ended up in auction rooms or antique shops across the country is quite a sad thought. I suppose for me, it’s because we as a family take such pride in the medals earned by my grandfather and great grandfather, and for the last few years they along with a picture of them both (only one in uniform unfortunately) have taken pride of place on my Nan’s living room wall. For me they are part of our family story – the fact my great grandfather is believed to have arrived in Britain because he wanted to fight in the war and his native Sweden being neutral, marking a changing point in the family history. I can’t imagine them being given away or sold and would fight to keep them in the family.

With this in mind,  I got thinking about the fascinating project my fellow MA student Sue has begun, which uses the diaries her granddad kept during WW1 to offer a very personal insight into life during the conflict. The collection of memorabilia also includes medals, postcards and letters all of which are providing her with some wonderful material on which to base blog posts and with which we, as the interested audience, can engage. It is a really thought provoking way to think about one of those periods of history we think of as familiar, by emphasising the personal experience. The diaries were only discovered after his death, which in itself tells us something about what those diaries meant to him, but had they not been kept and treasured by Sue and her family, this valuable record would have been lost. And it's that idea that underpins my whole reason for writing this blog - the idea of giving away or disposing of something so valuable to a family story. Sue's project is a very personal one but it is also a very publically relatable story and I for one am very keen to hear more of William John West Taylor’s story as it unfolds.

Selection of one of my relatives medals.

I’m sure that Sue’s project is driven by a desire to find out more about the stories behind this amazing assortment of material and the people involved, just as it is with many of us who embark on our own similar family history projects. The genealogical revolution has really gripped the nation and there is an inexhaustible desire to know more about our own individual’s family’s past – so what it is that motivates some people to sell medals or memorabilia? Or worse, too throw it away? And what has led to so much of this material being ‘family-less’? I notice this is not just a predicament found in Britain, but remember vividly passing a stall in Rome which was also selling medals and at the time commented, how if I could have afforded too, I would have bought the medal, traced to whom it was awarded and returned it to the family – they are only small items but they represent so much and I think that is all too easily forgotten. However then on the other hand, I think well, if they were appreciated and valued by the family they'd never have been given up in the first place. There are also those  soldiers who actually sold them, so I guess as with everything, there are many different ways to look at this.

What makes this worse, for me anyway, is that some people have seen the commercial value in this and try to exploit the interest some of us have in our family’s past. Not so long ago I was contacted by a medal dealer who had acquired the medals of a distant relative of mine. He’d tracked this relative through Ancestry and seen my relationship to him and contacted me to see if I would be interested in buying these medals from him. I can only assume, others in a similar position were also contacted, but what a thing! I mean not only has he reduced this item to a meaningless commodity, but he was also willing to play on the sentimentality of those of us with an interest in genealogy. Now I know this is a livelihood for some people, but really? In my view these items are invaluable and should be treasured by families as a reminder of the contribution their ancestors made to two of the greatest conflicts in modern history and at such a prominent time in the ceremonies of remembrance we should really be remembering this.

Then again, as a final thought, perhaps those who were awarded the medals want them forgotten? I know in our case, those medals were hidden away in a tin for years, not displayed - perhaps that's what they both would have wanted? It's hard to say really isn't it - but to see them auctioned on the television just seemed disrespectful in some way.

To be taken to Sue’s blog please follow this link - http://fromshacklefordtothesomme.wordpress.com/ and she has also set up a Facebook page which can be found here https://www.facebook.com/shacklefordtothesomme?fref=ts. Do take a look and keep an eye out for updates on this very interesting project as it evolves.