Someone with my sons name who lived in my house died in WWI

[BathFullOfEels]

Well not my actual house yet, but the one we’re moving to next month. Someone on my Facebook feed had linked to a website called astreetnearyou.org . It lists all the people from your postcode and nearby who died in WWI, their names, ages and some of them have pictures too.

It’s not that unusual as my ds has a bit of a grandad name our my surname is a very common English one. He was only 19 and died in 1917, his brother at the same address died in 1919 (I guess Spanish flu or something, although maybe war related?). There’s also so many surnames in there that I recognise from the local area.

I think the number of people who died in WWI is so huge it’s almost impossible (for me anyway) to grasp. But looking at the lists of addresses, often with 2 or more deaths per home seems so much more real and horrific. I just can’t comprehend what towns would have been like in the years that followed. Not just in terms of there being so few men but the mothers, wives, sisters who were left to carry on. Those poor, poor boys.

Sorry, I know armistice day is over but I just found it really shocking and upsetting.

What about that family from North London who had 4 sons killed in a short space of time? The great great niece was on Sky news last week recounting from a book of memoirs written. She was also in possession of 4 x 'Dead Man's Pennies' received by the parent's of the 4 sons. Sky continued to inform us that the Military Police came for the 5th son as soon as he was old enough. The mother refused and stood her ground. She went to prison I think, but a High Court Judge overruled the judgement under exceptional circumstances. He was spared. She kept him at home.

Heartbreaking to watch. My heart was in my mouth.

I've also used that site and it does bring it home so much, doesn't it? And the older I get the more shocking it is how young so many of them were when they died. We were taken to the Somme on a school trip when I was 14 and I found it incredibly moving to see all the graves, but not as much so as when I went back in my late 20s - when you're 14 a 19 year old is an adult, when you're older you realise that they were just children.

My great great uncle and great great grandad were Accrington Pals. My great great uncle never came home, he died in action on the first day of the Somme,as did most of that regiment. 'Mown down like Meadow grass' was how a witness put it. Such a terrible waste of young lives.

Oh Wenttoseainasieve.

No words.

The soldiers were treated by the generals simply as cannon fodder. They gave orders they knew meant certain death to the troops day in and day out. It was a case of who caved first. I remember learning about wars of attrition in history lessons at school but not really taking in what the human cost was.

General Haig and his peers, IMO were murderous war criminals.

Ive just found someone who has to be a relative of my DH, same street and same (quite unusual) surname. Yes, it really does bring it home, this man was only 17 when he died, I don't think my husband will have heard of him. So sad.

Thanks for the link, OP. Heartbreaking and fascinating. Just sent to my dad; my four grandparents all had unusual surnames which is handy for searches like this.

It's important to bear in mind that, although lots of areas suffered disproportionate losses, the vast number of those who served came back alive - only 11.5% of those who served in WWI died, and that figure is skewed by a higher percentage of officer deaths, so for the 'normal' soldiers it would have been slightly less. A much higher percentage died in the civil war, and, although 700,000 British soldiers died in total in WWI, but 228,000 of the population died of Spanish flu shortly after.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25776836

Of course that's not to say that they came home 'well' - so many of them would have had some form of physical to mental injuries.

It's important to put it in context and not assume that the majority died - the fact that most didn't but came home having experienced that, shaped social history for the rest of the 20th century.

Thanks OP

I know what I'll be doing tonight

Thank you OP for the link to the site. Although my house is post-war, there was someone over the road who died in WW1 aged 20.