Letters From the Trenches: A Soldier of the Great War (29 page)

Five days later, Harry sends another postcard to Jack, this time from one of the YMCA establishments that were still providing facilities for troops serving abroad.

Nearly home! I would think that his most likely means of travel would have been by train from Marseilles, retracing in reverse most of the route he had taken with the battalion in November 1917.
The YMCA has put its own postmark on the card; Harry must have stayed in Hut 2.

Finally, we come to the letter that signifies the end of the war for Private Harry Lamin.

POSTSCRIPT

I
T IS DIFFICULT TO WRITE
the last chapter of this book. Ironically, it was relatively easy to chart the part of Harry’s life when he was in the
Army. The course of his life and the events in it were indicated by his letters and the battalion’s war diary and, with a bit of detective work, it was quite possible to produce a reasonably
full account.

For the period after the war had ended, however, I found that there was virtually no documentation available. I am in the situation in which many have found themselves as the years have passed:
it is simply too late to ask, as there is no one left who knew Harry well. Sadly ‘Willie’, my father, no longer has a reliable memory, and so cannot really contribute much. I am left
with the long-ago childhood memories of my sister Anita and myself, as well as any official documents that I can find, to paint some sort of picture of the remaining forty years of Harry’s
life.

We have seen that he returned to the family home in Mill Street, Ilkeston. He left the Army with £61 2s 1d (£61.10), a substantial sum in 1920. It sounds rather less impressive,
however, on recalling the three years of military service that he endured. In today’s terms it is worth about £3,000, so it was by no means a fortune. The final sum includes the back
pay that he was owed of £33 19s 3d (£33.96; worth about £1,700 today) and a ‘War gratuity’ of the princely sum of £15 (£750). He also received four
weeks’ leave, paid at 4s a day (£0.20, worth £10 today!), an allowance for rations and a clothing allowance of £2 12s 6d (£2.62), worth today around £130. And
that was it. After three years in uniform, often in conditions of unimaginable hardship, danger and terror, the total payment to Harry came to about £3,000 at today’s values.

The £1 ‘deduction for overcoat’ shown on the certificate meant that Harry was allowed to keep his Army greatcoat for the journey home. If he were to hand it in to the local
railway station, he would be reimbursed the £1 – about £50 today. The rest of his pay settlement was made in instalments, the final payment being made on 29 January 1920.

Later, in the 1940s, Harry and Ethel moved from Mill Street to nearby Gordon Street, where they lived for the rest of their lives. There is a family legend that Harry could not accept the idea
of moving house, even to a much pleasanter home, and so Ethel arranged the move one day while he was at work. He came home to find the job done.

A precious photograph shows Harry at Willie’s wedding to Nancy, my mother, in 1941. Modest to the last, he was the sort of man who tended to disappear when photographs were being taken, so
very few survive.

As children, Anita and I would sometimes stay for weekends with our grandparents at Gordon Street. I remember those visits with great affection. Harry was working in a lace factory in Derby,
travelling the ten miles or so to and from work by bus.

He was a quiet man. I can recall walking with him to the nearby gasworks with a wheelbarrow to pick up coke for the fire, perfectly companionably, but neither of us saying much. He would
sometimes go for a day out to the races at Southwell, near Nottingham. At that time, the only legal way to gamble on horses was to use the on-course bookmakers, and my sister tells me that Ethel
did not approve of his gambling. Apart from that, he was, apparently, very reluctant to go away from home, even for day trips, never mind for a holiday. Perhaps this was a product of his war
experiences, but Anita recalls a more unhappy legacy. She remembers him sleeping in an armchair after Sunday lunch and waking screaming. ‘It’s the war,’ Grandma Ethel
explained.

Connie died in 1929, aged nineteen, from complications following an operation – all linked to the cerebral palsy with which she had been afflicted as a baby. She was buried on Christmas
Eve in the large municipal cemetery in Ilkeston. Having raised her as their own, one can imagine what a tragedy this must have been for Harry and Ethel, as well as Kate – Harry’s
letters from the war often mention Connie in the fondest terms, and he is always solicitous of her welfare. Kate herself died in 1948 at the age of seventy-one, and was buried with the daughter
whom she had never been able to acknowledge in life. Brother Jack died in 1945, aged seventy-five, a distinguished clergyman; I am told that there is a plaque to him in York Minster.

There is one other familiar name to account for. Like so many other units raised after August 1914, the 9th (Service) Battalion, the York and Lancaster Regiment was disbanded
after the end of the Great War, as the hugely swollen armed services shrank back to peacetime levels. The regiment went on to raise more battalions for the Second World War, including a new 9th
Battalion, and these too disappeared after that war ended in 1945. The regiment was disbanded in 1968 (although maintaining its regimental headquarters until 1987), so ending the history of a
distinguished infantry formation whose two original components, the 65th and 84th Regiments of Foot, had begun life in 1758 and 1793, respectively. Of the men who served in the twenty-two
battalions of the regiment that fought in the Great War, 8,814 were killed or died of wounds. Between them they won 1,190 awards for gallantry, including four Victoria Crosses.

The only other photograph of Harry that I have been able to find would appear to have been taken at a family gathering, or perhaps a social-club outing. My guess is that it
dates from the late 1950s.

Harry retired at sixty-five in 1952, and lived until 1961, when he died peacefully at home. My mother, telling me of his death, reported that he said, ‘I’ve had a
good life.’

GLOSSARY

APO
– Army Post Office; also known as a field post office