RootsChat.Com

Hello Jerry,
 I am Charles granddaughter, Pete's mum and wanted to thank you for posting all this information and for your book which Pete and I have downloaded and are reading. This is so wonderful to learn about the man who we were all just dimly aware of. My father had just one memory of sitting on his fathers lap in a bathchair. My grandmother kept his medals proudly on display under a glass dome on the sideboard but these were stolen during WWII after she died. My father went to clear the rooms out and found they were gone. Thank goodness they left his portrait. My grandmother was refused a war widows pension after he died. There are two explanations of this. One was that he was apparently discharged A1 fit which does not square with the injury you refer to and/or that the pension was refused because she would not part with his piano. Charles was a piper and apparently played the piano very well too.
We understood that he had been gassed and that this was why he was discharged and later died.
It is strange that Charles mentions a baby daughter in his last letter. We understood that my grandmother was carrying twins and lost them we presumed with the shock of his death but maybe one survived  for a while. However the source of any information was secondhand through her younger sister Alice who was a great gossip and source of spurious information. How close she and my grandmother were at the time of Charlie's death is anybody's guess. I only saw her a handful of times and never knew her well enough to ask questions.

Thank you again. Ros