Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on May 07, 2003 at 08:54:04 from 195.93.32.8 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: World War One posted by John Wilson on May 07, 2003 at 06:40:12:
Lt-Colonel Jolys is a contemporary of Winston Churchill, (an infantry officer in WW1), so he might well have served, like Churchill, on the NW Frontier, in the Sudan and in the Boer War as well as WW1.
Visiting churches in East Suffolk one is always struck by the number of dead in WW1 from villages which are tiny, or non-existent, today. Ramsholt, on the north bank of the estuary of the River Deben, had a population of about 165 in 1914 and lost 23 men; today the village is a yachtsman's pub and two houses.
Slater Bob's "Government Chap" is another casualty of the Great War, though Uncle Jim says he told the same tale about the Boer War.
Certainly, these adventures take place in a landscape in which adult males in the prime of life have been thinned out.