DCLXVI – The Numeral of the Beast - Part 31

A way to promote my fantasy trilogy - Breaking the Tranquillity of Solitude…

Part 31

Joy Amongst Sadness...

After the hilarity of the scene described last week, a much more sombre feel was equally rewarding when the school organised the cast to take the two war hero’s to Cannock Chase WW1 cemetery where they laid wreaths and posed for some very poignant photographs.

When it came time for the gentlemen to depart we had already become quite closely acquainted, with them taking to me as the youngest cast member and the one that made them laugh. Many tears were shed on the train station platform as I waved them off back to London. I received letters and photographs from them, but sadly never saw them again and it made me realise how important a school play and friendships can be. It stayed with me and draws a tear even now as I type.

All these funny and sad memories have contributed to making me the person I am and in turn influenced my desire to perform and write so I will now attempt to relay some much more accurate details of other similar things that do the same. This time no stretches and embellishments, just the facts. My grandfather (pictured below) and WW1…

My father (pictured on the right below) was 55 when I was born in 1965 and his father had died in WW1 in 1918, when my father was only 7 years old. He is buried with thousands of his comrades at Etaples military cemetery in France. My father would probably not have remembered much of his father, as from aged 4 he was away at war, but he always relished telling me stories that he had been told thousands of times by his mother over the years, which must, to him have felt like memories. I can even not start to imagine what his father lived through, but even though my father loved telling the stories, he always cried a little when he told them to me, as do I now, as I relay them to you. However it is to some degree cathartic and makes me proud to do so.

As I understand it my Grandfather was in the South Staffs regiment, sent to action in WW1 and joined hundreds of other regiments to fight in France in early 1915. I have always trusted my father’s hand me down account of how his fathers regiment was decimated and reformed with new recruits 5 times during the gruesome battle of the Somme in 1916.

TBC...