My Family History Journey

  The third person in my series on Remembrance is Lance Corporal George Anderson. George was my wife’s first cousin twice removed and was born in Sheffield in 1889.   George was a labourer, married with two children when war broke out in August 1914. The family lived in the Shalesmoor area of Sheffield, just off Penistone Road.   George enlisted in the 7 th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment on 11 th September 1914, barely a month after war was declared. He was part of a wave of enthusiastic enlistment by thousands of men at a time when everyone was saying the war would be over by Christmas.   According to his service record, George was based in England up to 12 th July 1915, when the battalion was sent overseas and took up positions in the Ypres Salient. The battalion was part of 50 th Brigade, 17 th Northern Division.   George must have been a good soldier and was promoted to Lance Corporal, in the field, on 18 th February 1916.   ...

  At 11 am on the 11 th Day of the 11 th month the guns fell silent and the fighting was over. The war to end all wars, The Great War, was over. Every year, people gather at war memorials, grave sites, battlefields, in churches and places of worship to fall silent for 2 minutes to remember all those killed in all conflicts.   Probably every family historian will have a family member who served, fought or died in the First World War, certainly in the UK. Cities, towns and villages lost a generation on the blood soaked battlefields of the Western Front but also across the world in what was the first truly global war, fought on an industrial scale with all the new technology of a industrial world.   Over the next few weeks I am going to try and tell the stories of just a few of these brave men who fought and died for their country.   I start with the story of two brothers, born into a colonial, middle class Victorian family who died within 17 days of each other ...