Hi, Everyone,
I have recently made contact with a long-lost cousin of mine, a son of my father's only brother. Over the internet he sent me a couple of pictures that I had not seen before that obviously his father had owned, and they are studio portraits taken before and after the 1939-1945 World War. In the first, my father and uncle are young men of 17 years and 19 years respectively, already kitted out in military uniform; their eyes are laughing and carefree. However, in the 1945 picture, although they are proudly wearing officer's uniform - one in a Scottish Highland regiment, the other in an English regiment I am not precisely sure of, their eyes are somehow darker, harder, and with a distant, faraway look, even though they were still relatively young. My father had fought against the Japanese in a hard campaign in Burma, culminating in him being wounded at Kohima; my uncle had fought the whole way up Italy.
My grandmother Sherwood would obviously have been hugely relieved to have had both her sons survive such a war, but you can see from both photos what a toll it took. Do other people have similar photographic evidence, and is it possible on this excellent list to exchange such evidence. I am a complete novice still when it comes to exchanging files, etc., so perhaps I need to be taken in hand by one of those impressive multi-starred generals - sorry, moderators!- with which this site seems to abound.
Very best wishes,
Keith
