I remember. . .

[elmwood]

He was twenty when they met. He had somehow escaped from the Fall of France in the summer of 1940, more by luck than anything else, but that's a story for another time.

Jimmy Durrant, Curly to his mates, went on a blind date organised by his friend, Ace. They were young Englishmen in South Africa at the end of 1941, working as gunnery instructors in

Comments

[sartorias]

They sound like wonderful people.

[elmwood]

Thank you, Sherwood, I think they were. I want to try and preserve a sense of them for my son, who only really knew his Grandpa. There is a lot I want to write, but just can't at the moment. I am realising through the trawling through the family tree that I have been doing, how much and how easily information is lost. We knew for, example, that my father's father came from a large family, but never realised that he was the second of ten children until I found them in the various censuses of the late nineteenth century. Reading between the line of those terse documents, something was up as the children were farmed out to relatives as a matter of course even at a very early age. The oldest son never lived with his parents after his fifth birthday and my grandfather was with an aunt and uncle by the time he was twelve.

[quiller77]

Lovely story, Gillian. Thanks for sharing.

[elmwood]

It's just a little one, but I wanted to write something about my dad for Remberance Day.