Armistice Day.
This is my ‘Uncle’ Frank. Actually, he was my mother’s uncle: the husband of my maternal grandmother’s sister, ‘Auntie’ Dorothy. (She was lovely.) He’s the only member of my mother’s family who’d served in the forces. All the other men (and some of the women) worked in the coal mines, and were therefore exempt from National Service. Frank was in the army. Here, he’s shown on leave at his home town of Blaina, Monmouthshire, in 1945. He’d survived the war intact.
My father served in the Army Catering Corps. He never saw active duty; his call-up came just as the war was ending. But he did boil an awful lot of potatoes. Had he been killed in action, I would not be writing this.