We will remember them!

When my paternal grandfather Robert Strickland was called up to serve his country in 1916 he was a young father of four girls, the youngest Lilly having been just born in June of that year. He was called to serve in the Royal Garrison Artillery as a gunner and after a short military training was shipped over to Flanders.

A year later on the 27th October 1917 he was wounded at Hell Fire Corner, this was a critical junction just outside of Ieper on the road to Menin and the front lines. As the Germans where situated on higher ground it was only possible to cross Hell Fire Corner at nightfall, it was renowned as one of the most dangerous junctions. It was here that my grandfather was hit by schrapnel and was seriously wounded. Back home in Hull my grandmother received a notice that her husband was missing in action and presumed dead, this must have been devastating news for her and having four young daughters to fend for she started applying for a widow’s pension.

Hull was an important Port and what many people don’t know is that it was actually bombed during the First World War by Zeppelins. My aunts told me that their mum wrapped them up in blankets one cold winter evening and took them out to a ditch in the fields behind their house because there was a zeppelin attack. How frightening this must have been.

Thankfully my grandmother Charlotte, eventually received a telegram telling her that her husband Robert was in a hospital in Newcastle recovering from his wounds. My grandfather suffered from his injuries for the rest of his life and died of a heart attack on the eve of the Second World War World War aged only 51. My maternal grandfather was too young to be called up but his older brother William Henry Orwin joined up when he was only 16. He joined the East Yorkshire Regiment in 1915 and served the first few months in Egypt. In 1918 he was part of the Lewis Gun section of the East Yorkshire Regiment and was also in Flanders.

In May of 1918 after a major battle he was reported as Missing in Action, he was only 18 years old. Finally in September of 1918 his parents received a postcard from him that he was a prisoner of war, thankfully he too survived the war.

An estimated 20 million people were killed during this terrible war and about 21 million people were wounded. Twenty years later the world was on the brink of another world war! Both my Dad’s elder brothers served in the Navy and my Mum’s elder brother Cyril William Orwin joined the RAF in 1939 when he was 16 years old. After doing his flight training in Canada he became a fighter pilot for the RAF and flew many reconnaissance flights over Germany. On the 10th September 1944 after returning from a reconnaissance mission he was shot down above the Hoek of Holland, he was only 21 years old. Thankfully he was able to land in the harbour and was fished out of his wreak by the Germans and taken as a prisoner of war. My Nana was always grateful to the Dutch resistance worker who was able to send notice to the UK that he had survived the crash and was a prisoner.

Cyril spent the last year of the war in a prisoner of war camp, POW camp Stalag Luft 7 and stalg Luft 111-A in Poland. In the last weeks before their liberation by the Russians they were forced to march through the snow in terrible conditions. Thankfully Cyril also survived the war and returned home to his family. His father, my grandfather who had been too young to serve in the first war was called up and served in India and my aunt Joan served in the W.A.A.F. as one of the code breakers in Chicksands, Bedfordshire.

Both my parents were teenagers during the war but because Hull was a port on the eastern coast it was one of the most targeted areas and was severely damaged by air raids. My Mum often told us about the air raid sirens and having to go outside in the night to their air raid shelter. One time a bomb landed at the end of their street causing quite a lot of damage to their house. She also recalled being in the city centre after an air raid and seeing a tall building which had been destroyed and wondering whether there were still people under the rubble. World War 2 caused and estimated 70 to 85 million deaths worldwide! 3% of the global population at the time. Civilian deaths were around 40 to 55 million, military deaths around 20 to 25 million but tens of millions died due to war related famine, disease, forced labour, massacres and genocides including approximately 6 million Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust. We always need to remember, not just the heroic sacrifices but the suffering and traumas that families suffered and are still suffering in places like The Ukraine, Palestijn, Iran, wherever there is war. We need to remember the horrors of war so that it doesn’t happen again.