Another Casualty of War. This is in memory of a man I will not name, who lived in a village nearby. In early 1918 he was a recent widower with two young sons and a baby daughter when his call-up papers came. The baby was being looked after by relatives, but he knew the boys would go to the workhouse orphanage. None of the people with power in that small place would be prepared to suggest he should stay at home; after all, there was the orphanage for such cases. On the night before he was due to leave, he put his sons to bed and when they had fallen asleep he killed them before taking his own life. The two boys were buried together in the children's section of the little cemetery. The father was buried next to his wife's grave. I think he was a casualty of war, just as much as if he had fallen in battle.
