Elizabeth: last man standing

My grandfather was a Lewis gunner in WW1. His battalion was on the Somme on the 24th of August 1916 at a place called Delville Wood (which the troops renamed Devil Wood).

Fighting began in the wood in July and by August the shelling had been so relentless that only one tree remained, rain had turned shell holes to pools of water and mud, many contained decaying corpses.

My grandfather continued to fire his Lewis gun until the trench he was in was over-run by German soldiers. His comrades had all been killed and he hid beneath their bodies for two days until the trench was recaptured by the British.

A German officer described the scene after the battle: 

“Delville Wood had disintegrated into a shattered wasteland of shattered trees, charred and burning stumps, craters thick with mud and blood, and corpses, corpses everywhere. In places they were piled four deep.”

The local newspaper in Salford Priors (Warwickshire), where my grandfather lived, reported that Private F.J. Salisbury of Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, was awarded the Military Medal “for gallant conduct and devotion to duty.” 

~ Elizabeth Isaacs

Rachel: the pacifist betrayed

My great grandmother, Ada Wells, was an ardent pacifist. 

During World War One she was banned from church, because she would mutter angrily or even shout whenever the war was mentioned in jingoistic prayers or sermons. She was also banned from picture theatres: she couldn’t bear news stories about the war.

Here’s an excerpt from one of her many passionate speeches and articles against war:

That patriotism which would achieve its ends by force is a false and hollow mockery, whose way is by the palpitating anguish and the life-blood of fellow men; by the heart-breaking despair and woe of women; by the torture of little children…

But her own son Stan, the only male in the family, ran away and secretly enlisted in the Navy. He was twice in a ship that was torpedoed, but returned to New Zealand safely. Ada must have had mixed feelings—relieved that he was safe, but profoundly disappointed by his actions.

Photo of Ada Wells from Christchurch City Libraries. Retrieved from christchurchcitylibraries.com, 10 March 2013. 

~ Rachel McAlpine

Liora: gripping the children


As my great-grandfather was taken by force to be a soldier in the Russian army, my great-grandmother escaped  to Hungary. She walked for 12 days holding very strongly her two little children by her hands, one of them my grandmother. They were trying to get to where all the Jewish people were gathered.

When she finally arrived she could not move her hands for a whole week: the blood had stopped flowing because she had gripped the children's hands so strongly for so long.

~ Liora Noy

Deborah: dead of night

My Scottish grandmother met her husband in 1916 in Edinburgh, Scotland where he was recovering from WW1, gassing and the trenches. 

They married and boarded a train to Portsmouth and at the end of that same day, boarded a ship bound for New Zealand. The ship was hove to because of German U Boats in The Channel. 

My grandmother had a change of heart or maybe a premonition and made her new husband promise that they would sleep on the boat that night, and that in the morning they would return to the auld country.

My grandmother woke to the sound of the ship’s engines. The boat had sailed in the night. She never returned to Scotland.

~ Deborah Pope

Message to Crows Feet dancers

Please send us your family stories and photos related to World War One.

Here is where we will stash them until they are used in "The Armed Man", our big show in 2014.

Somebody in your family has told you something about the war. Or they have kept ominously silent on the subject: that is also a story!

• Tiny stories are fine, just a sentence or two.
• Longer stories are very welcome too. We can use them all.
• Please find photos, the bigger the better.
• They should be about some way your family was affected by World War One.

Send your stuff to me and I'll load it up:

rachel [at] writing.co.nz