I didn't mean it to sound harsh Suey, but pragmatic definatley !
The emotional side of the brutal reality of life we all turn up in our research is something none of us unless you have tanned leather for skin can escape, i've been near to tears on ocassion.
I was talking of the kind of thing which i suspect you did turn up, which many possibly through shame put their reseach down, and never pick it up again.
If an injustice has been done to a relative, it likley would provoke strong emotions in me, and whether or not guilty of some hideous crime - whatever would not in any way provoke feelings of shame on me or my family.
I was doing some research some years back for a lady whose Gt Grandfather was an officer in the RMLI, i was suprised to find he had been Court Marshalled, and dishonourably discharged, his crime ? he shot his mouth off in the officers mess about the way the general staff were running the war, Brave man i say ! I would have been proud of him, She was mortified, and didn't want me to find out any more.
I also have a relation - a first cousin twice removed, who was a Lieutenant in the 10th Scottish rifles, he cracked up under the persistant shelling, other officers didn't most of them were killed at some point.
I can tell you now if he was a rank and file squaddie he likley would have been court marshalled, given the criteria they applied then, subsequent medical Boards - several of them in England and Scotland sympathised with him, and gave him periods of leave running concurrently, so that he never saw the front again, and eventually transferred him, and promoted him to Captain as a Railway transport officer.
He stated quite clearly in a letter to one board that if they sent him back to the front he would crack again under fire.
In another letter he is complaining that he hasn't recieved payment for his travelling expenses, and stays in top - and i do mean top London hotels, - the Strand and the Connaught, to name two.
I don't think he was neccesarily treated with undue benevolence, but it angered me when i thought of all the men who in the same situation as he were not.
Lets call a spade a spade here - do i think he was a Coward - well given the criteria that they judged men of lower rank - yes i do, but only as the word would be applied to other men of lower rank then.
Do i feel ashamed of him ? No most definatley not, every man has a point at which he will break under those circumstances, it is not for me to judge him, condemn him or feel the need to be ashamed of him. Would i stop researching him no definatley not, in fact my research on him still continues - trying to find where he's buried he died in East Africa in 1938. It's my family history, it is what it is, i couldn't change it, nor would i want to.
Hope that little lot gives you more of an idea where i'm coming from Suey, sometimes i'm not that good at getting my point over the way i intended LOL !
