Monday November 25^th, 1918

Arrived Manchester 6:10. Left Manchester 7:35. Arrived Shaw 8:30. Glad to get home at last. Met a few friends.

Frank

On November 12th, Frank and the B-team are ordered ‘to reach the Battalion at all costs.  Good reception in every town and village. Arrived Sivry-Rance in Belgium 5pm. Rousing reception.‘  The next day the Band played in the town square to a ‘good crowd of Belgians‘.

On Sunday, 17th, the Battalion is inspected by Brigadier-General Williams who announces a 150 mile march into Germany. And then, Frank writes: ‘6pm warned to proceed on leave tomorrow… Nearly silly with joy.‘  The journey back through France is mainly by train, but very slow and Frank eventually boards a ship for Folkstone six days later.  He manages to eat at the Salvation Army hut at Victoria station and then heads to Manchester.  Frank arrives home early on the morning of November 25th.  Typically for Frank, his diary entry, the last he will write, is ‘Glad to get home at last. Met a few friends.‘

While the war is over, his Army service is not.  He will return to the 9th Battalion after a fortnight’s leave. In March, he will be one of the ‘retainable men’  who is transferred to the 1/6th Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment.  Frank will continue to serve until November 4th, 1919 when he is discharged and awarded the Silver War Badge, denoting he is unfit for continued service under Paragraph 392 (16) of the King’s Regulations.

Civilian Life

Upon discharge, Frank will return to his wife Sarah and daughter Olive in Shaw, Lancashire.  He will also go back to work in the cotton mills, albeit now only deemed fit for ‘women’s work’.  Unfortunately Frank will continue to be plagued by the ‘rheumatics’ he suffered with in Salonika and then France, and be in and out of  hospitals up and down the country.  For example, in August 1937 he is in the MOP Hospital in Liverpool where he receives a postcard from his daughter Olive, now married with a daughter of her own. Eventually he will have his leg fused straight and walk with a cane for the rest of his life.

He and Sarah will have two more children, Eileen, born in 1920, and my mother, Brenda, who was born in 1926.   The photograph shows the family during the Second World War.  By the time it was taken Olive and her husband, Harry, have three girls. Eileen is also married, to Harold, and they have a son.  My Mum, Brenda, (sitting beside Sarah, in front of Frank) is a student nurse based in Huddersfield.

I suppose Frank was one of the lucky ones.  A husband and father when he was mobilized, he came home to his family.  Despite signing up during the Derby scheme in 1915, Frank only served in the Army for two years, half of it in peace time.

While he lost comrades, he was never wounded.  From his diary, it is clear that he was sometimes scared: in the front line trenches of Salonika, out on patrol, being shot at, shooting at others or inadvertently mixing in earth from exploding shells with his evening meal.  But he never went ‘over the top’, running from a trench across no-mans land.  He wasn’t gassed or shell shocked or maimed.  He came home.

For Frank, and everyone who served in the Armed Services.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the members of the Manchesters.org, the Great War Forum and the Salonika Campaign Society for their unending generosity in helping me whenever I couldn’t find or make sense of something.  Also the Imperial War Museums, the National Archives and the National Library of Scotland for holding such fantastic collections of photographs, recollections and memorabilia and making them so accessible.