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| The use of gas in WW1 - I know my grandfather was gassed. Obviously none of these are my photos. |
I know that this is a travel blog. But I guess that it is my blog, and I am mostly doing this for me. So I will digress a bit. If you have been following my travel blog, you might have noticed that my second travel passion (apart from looking for animals, which is my first passion) is to visit battlefields and particularly the First World war battlefields. I have always been very interested in this. I know from discussions with my late father (Des Bragg) that my Grandfather ( Richard Bragg) was in the first world war. My grandfather passed away when my father was still at school, probably in the late 1930's. All that I knew about my Grandfather in the Great war was that he was at Arras and that he was gassed. Before a trip I did to France a few years ago, I wanted to try and find out a bit more about the history. I wanted to (and did) go to Arras in France, as all I knew was he was at Arras. After searching on the internet, I discovered that the best way to get any form of history about an individual in any war was to try and get their military records. You needed to contact the Department of Defense and ask for the military record. What are the chances - things are falling apart rapidly. What significance would old war records have for the department of defense. Turns out, the achieves section of the Department of Defense is still fully functional! As I have in my possession the war service medals of my Grandfather, father and great uncle, which are engraved with their service numbers (the keys to the archives!), I sent off a request for the records of all three, with very little hope in my heart of getting anything back. After about 3 months, there it was - an envelope, stamped with the Dept of Defense, which contained the military records of all three!
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| Arras in 1917. |
Now the fun bit started. Trying to figure out the military codes and shorthand, not to mention the handwriting! However, once you get the hang of it, the information starts to flow. What I did with the data was to set up a spread sheet on excel with the first coloum being the date. You can then add entries in lines below as you get the information and then just sort on the date coloum from oldest to newest and the dates get sorted in chronological order. In other words, you end up with an excel document with a time line. The single most important data to get is the posting of the person. In other words where were they placed once they enlisted. You also need to make sure that if they were transferred from one unit to another that you have this information. Once you know into what unit he was posted, you can start to get lots of information on-line about the activities of the unit. The type of information which you get on the person's military records include postings and moving to different units, dates of promotions, dates of leave, submissions to hospitals (in some cases like Richard Bragg and Des Bragg) and dates listed as missing in action and confirmed as Prisoner of War (in the case of Edward Pearson).
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| Train in South West Africa 1914 |
My grandfather (Richard Bragg), took part in the First world war. My farther (Joseph Desmond Bragg) and Great Uncle (Edward Pearson) were involved in the Second World war.
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| Fall of Tabrouk |
So, what did I know before starting on this quest? With regards to my Grandfather, I knew that he took part in the First World War. I had his bayonet which was, very unfortunately, stolen from me during a break-in at my house. He also bought shares with his pay he received when he discharged from the army and some of these shares are still in the family almost 100 years later. I was told that he was at Arras and that he was gased and his health after the war was not very good and he passed away when my dad was still at school.
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| Rommel with South African POW |
My dad often used to speak of his time in the middle east, but always only the good times. He had a serious scar on his arm, and he told my sister that a "cat" scratched him. He told me he broke his arm playing football. I know that he played football as I remember seeing photos in his collection of photos. He had a huge number of photos from his army days. My dad, being my dad, all of the photos are meticulously marked with dates and the names of the people on the photos. I have all of these photos. I am going to have great fun fitting his photos into the time line I have now created for his military service. I will post some of these photos as I work through them.
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| SS Mauretina - the troop ship that took my Dad to war |
For my great Uncle Ted (he was actually my dad's uncle), I knew that he was captured at Tabrouk and that he spent quite a bit of the war as a Prisoner of War (P.O.W.). He was a very artistic person and he spent much of the time as a P.O.W. writing poetry, music, plays and other artistic activities. I have, in my procession, all of this. Just like my dad, Uncle Ted also included a lot of details, like dates, name of P.O.W. camps, names of people playing the roles in the plays and so on. This is a fantastic record of the time that he was a P.O.W. As I work through this treasury trove of information, I will continue to post more information in this blog.
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| Poem by Uncle Ted written in the Libyan Desert before the fall of Tabrouk |
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| Soccer during the war. |
When working through the information on my grandfather from the first world war, I first thought that the information I had was a bit "scratchy", but everything I needed was there and I now have quite a detailed history of his time between 1914 and 1919. I will start with his story in my next post, so stay tuned!
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| Wounded being evacuated by train |
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