Discussions

During wars the worst hardship for the women at home, and sometimes today men, is 'not knowing' if their Father, Husband, Brother, or Son might already be dead.  
 
Killed in a bombed building, crashed plane, drowned in a torpedoed vessel, or just shot in the trenches: there are so many ways to die in a War or on ‘Peace Keeping’ assignments.  
 
My Grandfather, Corporal Dorling, was a member of the crew of one of the Big Guns in Europe during the First World War. His Gun was hit and he and the crew all died.  
 
My mother was just a baby, her father never saw her. Every Remembrance Day during my life my mother was in tears all day, for the love of a man she had never met.  
 
Bereaved women get no comfort, the tears don’t stop, and they fall in the garden, in the milk pail, and in the bread dough as they continue their chores that are necessary to keep the rest of the family alive. Bitter tears and bread dough are the realities of a woman’s life in wartime.  
 
An update on my Remembrance is that about a year ago a friend of mine looked up my Grandfather on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission site.  
 
It would appear that Corporal Dorling did not die in France as my family believed, but in Belgium, probably in the Passchendaele campaign.  
 
Also there is a memorial kept for the fallen soldiers from that area. My Grandfather is on plaque #6. The sad part for me is that this monument was erected in 1937, and my mother did not know of its existence.  
 
Source:  
 
http://www.passchendaelethemovie.com/