Remembering

My friend Debbie ,you know Debs Dabs (shes in my side bar )made this graphic for me ,Thanks Debs you are so clever ...

Like many of you I have been watching the service of Rememberance ,at the Cenetaph,on the TV  ,watching members of the royal family, led by the Queen (what an amazing lady ,I watched her lay her wreath, pause ..then walk backwards down those steps ,shes over eighty ! )lay wreaths of poppys to our fallen in the wars ,this ceremony has been taking place since 1918 ,but is even more important now as we still have young men ,going of to war ,and not all of them are coming back .........

Two years ago ,when I had been writing my journal for about six weeks,  I posted the following entry ,with apologies to those of you that read it then ,I am posting it again .

Sixty seven years ago ,on another November day a young man couldnt cope any more ......

 At the going down of the sun and in the morning.....

As I begin this entry ,the time is ~~10.57,on the eleventh of the eleventh ,it feels appropriate to tell you about an uncle ,I never met ,My Uncle Jack ,he was my Dads younger brother ,I never met him but he was often spoken of with lots of love, sometimes with lots of laughter because I gather he was quite mischievous, as a young boy, And quite a "leg puller”, when in his youth .One story I remember (little pitchers have big ears ) my Granny telling ~~she was storing some apples for Christmas ,under her bed!! on a large tray and would check them from time to time for bad ones ! She realised though that the apples were disappearing so she ,became vigilant ,when Jack thought no one was watching ,he crept up the stairs ,unknown to him watched by his Mother from the stairs where she could see into her bedroom, he was lying on his belly ,half under the bed  with crunching noises coming from, under the bed Granny crept up and to use her words,” Slapped his arse ,and said caught you ,you little bugger !"She always told this story with a proud chuckle and wiped away a tear, Uncle Jack was popular with every one, had lots of girl friends until he became engaged to "Aunty" Dorothy, a lovely girl from the next village.

And then came the war ,my Uncle was called up along with thousands of other men to fight for his country .I don’t recall any more of the story prior to this ,but he was badly shot at Dunkirk,dont know how he got home .but this happened in the May of 1940,he was hospitalized ,patched up ,and sent home to recover ,but in the November ,was due to go back to the hospital for more surgery .Uncle Jack had, had all his private parts shot away, and according to an older cousin who sadly ,recently passed away, she could remember putting her fingers into the holes in his legs ! My Mother, who was pregnant with me , then (I was born the following February ) asked Uncle Jack ,would he be home for Christmas ,his reply Oh yes Phyllis,yes Ive got some thing planned ,A couple of days before he was due to return to the hospital ,he went over to the wash house across the yard at the back of the house and shot himself through the head ,my Granny heard the shot ,................after finding her son ,she ran the seventy yards or so to our house for my Dad ,who was home for his lunch .I wont do any more …….

Aunty Dorothy I can remember ,I can clearly see some brown gloves she knitted for me ,so she must have been around for some time after ,and I can also remember every one getting excited at wedding photos of her ,She married an American air man and went back to America, with him after the war ,I do hope she had a happy life .

When the war was over, I can also remember standing by my Dads side at a service in our Church when the plaque was unveiled, with the names of the men from our village including J Giddings, who had lost their lives that we might be free, I wouldn’t have been very old but I can,still hear the last post being sounded, and singing the hymn Oh,Valiant Hearts.

                     Have  Blessed Sunday ....love Jan xx