Recently separated after 17 years of marriage honest advice and views needed

[ralfgarnett]

The Kohema Epitaph.

When You Go Home,
Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow,
We gave Our Today'.

[chosen]

Originally Posted by ralfgarnett

Like so many of men and women he was a casualty of the Great War regardless of when it actually killed him, the same thing happened to a great uncle on my wifes side of the family, discharged from duty with wounds in 1916 he died of his wounds in 1936, as I do every year I have been over to the war memorial proudly wearing my poppy and medals, to me remembrance Sunday and November 11th are the most sacred days in the year, nothing else comes any where near in importance to them, and it has to be marked 100% correctly with due respect, diligence, and dignity, I sit on the WW1 local MBC committee and I keep the lefties on track, I was talking to the head of services at lunchtime and had great pleasure reminding him very politely of his responsibilities towards his duties and the up-keep of the website.

yes as were his family who had terrible struggles financially so much so that 3 of the girls were sent to an orphanage. MY mum was only 7 when she went and she stayed there for 9 years. The repurcussions of that awful war lasted so long into future generations. Who knows what effect that time had on the little girls, my mum and others, 3 of whom suffered from bad depression as adults.

[ralfgarnett]

That's very sad Chosen very sad indeed, however it is just one more tragedy stemming from the huge tragedy of the Great War, even to this day the legacy of conflict still touches people 100 years on, when we were in Ieper in May 2014 three builders had recently been killed by unexploded munitions on an industrial estate, every year there are explosions and the iron harvest yealds many horrors from that time, we were in Arras early in 2013 and we got talking to a young French couple, she was expecting their first child and she was telling us that expectant mothers are strongly advised not to drink tap water due to the high levels of contamination left in the soil from the high explosives and various chemicals used, later that year in July 2013 we were fortunate enough to visit an archeological dig at La Boiselle on the Somme and we were given a guided tour by the famous Peter Barton whom you will of seen on TV as he is eminent in his field and has done many programmes on the subject, and the amount of live munitions coming out of the ground at the granathof, the glory hole, and Scone Street trench was unbelievable, more gruesomely some years ago now when they were excavating the Yorkshire trench in Boezinghe in Flanders we were present when they took an old hobnail British army boot out of the mud still with part of the leg bone and presumably the foot still in it, that was sobering I can tell you, I have found fragments of bone over there before now and I always wrap them in tissue and take them to the nearest CWGC where I bury them in the soil and say the lords prayer over them, such happy days I miss our exciting trips to the Western Front I wonder if she does too ?.

[chosen]

Yes I always feel so much for the families of those who were never found, there must be thousands still lying there undiscovered:-( Also the the many women who had to remain unmarried due to all the young men killed there:-( The parents who lost all their sons, and thus their future and grandchildren. So much suffering.

[ralfgarnett]

Originally Posted by chosen

Yes I always feel so much for the families of those who were never found, there must be thousands still lying there undiscovered:-( Also the the many women who had to remain unmarried due to all the young men killed there:-( The parents who lost all their sons, and thus their future and grandchildren. So much suffering.

Well when you consider that the Menin Gate in Ieper commemorates 78;000 commonwealth soldiers that have no known grave and still lie in the ground or were blown to pieces I the salient, also the biggest CWG is Tyne Cot in Zonnebeke just outside Passendaele and it holds just over 12,000 graves, then the next biggest is Lijstenhoek in Poperinge which has around 11,000 graves, that cemetery was attached to the advanced dressing station and military hospital that was there, but the bigger picture is that between July-November 1917 the allies lost killed or simply missing 250,000 men and the German army around the same, so that is around half a million men killed in 5 months just for one little village and some high ground around the Ypres salient, the irony is that in March 1918 in the Prince Micheal offensive the German army counter attacked and took back every square inch of ground and more, so that meant that every single of those 250.000 men died for absolutely nothing, and I haven't even touched on the Somme, Arras, or Loos yet, there was a family in Lancaster I think it was that lost all 8 of their sons, in the end the telegraph boys actually pleaded with their bosses not to send them to that house any more, the father I believe gave up the ghost and died a few years after the war with a broken heart.

[chosen]

Originally Posted by ralfgarnett

Well when you consider that the Menin Gate in Ieper commemorates 78;000 commonwealth soldiers that have no known grave and still lie in the ground or were blown to pieces I the salient, also the biggest CWG is Tyne Cot in Zonnebeke just outside Passendaele and it holds just over 12,000 graves, then the next biggest is Lijstenhoek in Poperinge which has around 11,000 graves, that cemetery was attached to the advanced dressing station and military hospital that was there, but the bigger picture is that between July-November 1917 the allies lost killed or simply missing 250,000 men and the German army around the same, so that is around half a million men killed in 5 months just for one little village and some high ground around the Ypres salient, the irony is that in March 1918 in the Prince Micheal offensive the German army counter attacked and took back every square inch of ground and more, so that meant that every single of those 250.000 men died for absolutely nothing, and I haven't even touched on the Somme, Arras, or Loos yet, there was a family in Lancaster I think it was that lost all 8 of their sons, in the end the telegraph boys actually pleaded with their bosses not to send them to that house any more, the father I believe gave up the ghost and died a few years after the war with a broken heart.

So sad. It was an advantage then to have daughters.

[ralfgarnett]

Originally Posted by chosen

So sad. It was an advantage then to have daughters.

Not necesarilly, they could of been nurses pre-conflict, front line ambulance drivers, or they could of joined the VAD, either way they could easily of been posted to the Western Front where they were in almost constant danger of stray artillery shells, drifting gas, or air raids, and towards the end of the war the Spanish flu that killed more people than died in the entire Great War.

[chosen]

Originally Posted by ralfgarnett

Not necesarilly, they could of been nurses pre-conflict, front line ambulance drivers, or they could of joined the VAD, either way they could easily of been posted to the Western Front where they were in almost constant danger of stray artillery shells, drifting gas, or air raids, and towards the end of the war the Spanish flu that killed more people than died in the entire Great War.

yes but I believe they werent called up, but volunteered. Hence the very large numbers of young women left with no husband in that generation.

[ralfgarnett]

Originally Posted by chosen

yes but I believe they werent called up, but volunteered. Hence the very large numbers of young women left with no husband in that generation.

Hi Chosen I know we are way off topic here, but the volunteer nurses were the nurses known as VAD nurses (Voluntary Aid Detachment) they served both in the UK and on the Western Front, with regards regular pre-war trained nurses well you have me thinking now, I think they could volunteer to go over seas but I'm not sure if they were forcibly recruited to do so, I need to do some research in to that, many women of course worked in the many munitions factories itself a very dangerous job, not only were many women killed by explosions but they also suffered from TNT poisoning which for any women meant they could never have children but it could also turn their skin yellow and the popular name for them at the time was "canaries", many women left mills and jobs in service to work in munitions as the money was so much better, women also volunteered in other sectors such as being conductors on trams, and my WW late grandmother was the first female porter at a very famous local railway station, I just about remember her as she died the year we met, but I would of loved to have heard her stories, also when I was growing up I knew a local family who had 3 sons of fighting age but they were quakers so against armed conflict, however they volunteered to be medics and ambulance drivers in Flanders and France and they were as brave a the next man, the medics were very brave people and probably the most famous of them was Captain Noel Chavasse the only man to win 2 VC's in WW1 you can read more about this remarkable man here, I have had the honour of placing a poppy on his grave in Vlamertinge just outside Ieper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Godfrey_Chavasse

[chosen]

\Have you had any more thoughts on that email or are you just going to accept the inevitable now?

[ralfgarnett]

Hi Chosen apologies for not replying sooner but my internet has been down all day, yes I am going to send the email once I have perfected what I want to say, I was working on it yesterday.

[chosen]

I really wouldnt wait too long or put too much hope into it, or the dissapointment will be great. All you need to know is if she has changed her mind. If you make it something massive in your mind, then the fall will be far bigger, than if you just need to know what her plans are and when she will collect her things.

[ralfgarnett]

Just realised it was 21 years ago this evening I first met my wife,
I remember it well, we got talking, we had a drink and a fag, we had a smoochy last dance and a kiss and a cuddle, the evening ended and we swapped numbers, we didn't see each other again until almost 6 months to the day that we first met, the rest is history and has been well documented, I miss her terribly every waking second of every single day.

[Lindentree1]

Ah, memories. I know what you mean. Sometimes I wish I could erase them all because they all amounted to a very sad ending.

[ralfgarnett]

Originally Posted by Lindentree1

Ah, memories. I know what you mean. Sometimes I wish I could erase them all because they all amounted to a very sad ending.

Hi LDT, yes I know what you mean about memories, I can honestly say that in our time together I have 99.9% nothing but happy memories, she said the same to me last year, but as in any relationship there were also some sad memories of family bereavements that sort of thing, but inter personally I can count on one hand the amount of times I can recall us having what you could describe as an argument, two of those were caused by other people saying stupid misguided things and that was even before we were married and she was feeling insecure about things, another was on holiday about 10 years ago over something daft which I cant remember, another was walking home from the village during a storm when a power cable had blown down, she was about to walk in to it and I saw it at a split second and pushed her out of the way, for some reason she thought I had pushed her sideways for no reason and had a fit on me, I tried to explain why I had done it but she was off on one, eventually the penny dropped when I explained about the power cable dangling down, and after those I cant honestly remember us having any significant disagreements or fall outs, we just got on, which is why I still struggle to this day to understand why we are currently apart, I also don't understand why she never gave us any sort of chance, I guess she just fell out of love with me and didn't care about our marriage as much as I thought she did.