When I asked him many years later how he had made it through he said gruffly, “just luck son, just luck” and apart from telling me “I never saw any cowards in France, many scared boys but no cowards” that was the only thing he ever said to me about World War One and I didn’t press him on it as I got a feeling that it was something he did not want to discuss. You may have worked out that Auld Andra’ survived the whole hellish waste of human & animal life, French villages and countryside. He saw action at the first Battle of the Somme and various other locations throughout the trenches of France and Belgium including Passchendale.
Andrew, or Grandfaither as I called him enlisted when war broke out, joined the Cavalry and went to France with the rest of the Old Contemptibles.
It may not be of any interest to anyone but here we go.Īndrew Wingate was born on the 2nd of May 1892, the same day that his son was born some 45 years later and incidentally the date that his first grandson was due to be born a further thirty years into the future but decided to appear a week early just to mix things up a bit. I must add that it is not the only time that I think about these two men, they pop into my thoughts often. When JC texted me to ask if I would do my usual post for Remembrance Day here as my place has been mothballed for some time and the foreseeable, I first responded that I didn’t think there was any point as for the 11 years across the Kitchen Table I only posted the two names above, a pertinent picture and the most depressing song I could find just to dampen anybody’s spirits who hadn’t already learned the lesson of looking at my blog on that date.īut then I thought about it and it occurred to me that it might be good to go into a bit of depth about those two names and why on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month I stop whatever I am doing and spend 10 minutes or so remembering their faces, their voices and the influence that they had in shaping my views and outlook to life.
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