OK Everybody, Back to Work!

Right, that's it, holidays are over, the kids are back to school tomorrow, you return to work, unless you are in Australasia where you are already sitting on a bus heading for the destination longing to be back enjoying the high life. Others will emote that depression later in the next 24 hours.  I also look to struggling out in the morning as being Tuesday I will be attending the folks at the museum.  Now the school hols are over we will not have a thousand bairns wandering around leaving glitter all over the floor, drawing rude pictures on the old school blackboard, nor putting sticky fingers on glass cases.  We will have adults doing that instead!  Of course soon after lunch I will be back home full of ideas to forget in the following days, and probably asleep and dreaming of delights unknown for a wee while.

You are I am aware sick to the teeth of my preoccupation with dead soldiers, so let me shake your molars once again.  Having succeeded in finding Private French, the last man in that cemetery, I today soldiered on in my quest to find the last Great War grave in the main cemetery.  For the umpteenth time I wandered around the dew covered grass, in what was becoming a very warm sun, searching diligently for a man who would not acknowledge my calls. Then today, while wandering fruitlessly in a corner I found him, right under my nose! Several other men are buried nearby and somehow Sergeant Smoothy had hid himself.  Still I found him now and all the local men buried here are identified at last.  

A sad tale indeed lay in front of me.  I suspect Smoothy had been a regular soldier at the outbreak of war and fought his way through some of the bitterest fighting at Ypres, Loos and probably the Somme also.  His Division was demobilised early in 1919 and on a 'first in first out' basis he returned home to his wife and almost two year old son.  However within a few months he developed an appendix problem and died in hospital leaving his widow with the son to look after.  A year later this poor lass suffered again as her three year old only child died and joined her husband in the grave.  The effect must have been traumatic but she herself lived on until 1963 when at 80 years she rejoined her husband at last. Love is a strange thing, she never remarried, possibly because of love, possibly because she was in her thirties also, possibly because the trauma did not allow her to.  How very sad.

Also quite sad is the name on the foot of the fallen crucifix to the side of our man.  I had a quick look but the name is not found on Google.  This couple lived their lives and passed on leaving so little trace even Google cannot find their name anywhere!