Dodworth and the First World War - a memorial

Some men of Dodworth made great sacrifices in the First World War.

Some made the ultimate sacrifice in giving their lives for our future.

Others were seriously injured by explosions, gas, gunshot and many other terrible things.

Not one of them came home unmarked by the trauma of what happened to them.

The psychological damage alone was immense, they saw things that no-one should ever see, that no-one is made to see, and they experienced things that no-one is made to experience.

Then the survivors came home and got on with their lives as best they could.

Sometimes that was anything but easy.

Many were marked for life.

Some fellow sufferers understood, and gave support.

For most of them, their reward was a life-time working down a local coal mine, not the easiest of lives, in those days the mortality and morbidity of those jobs was incredibly bad, and the industrial diseases they encountered and contended with - were worse than anything experienced by anyone today.

The lives they led were hard, as were the lives of their family, and of the community in which they lived.

So - let us not forget them.

This year is the 100 year anniversary of that conflict.

To ensure that those who endured it are not forgotten, a group of local people are planning to create a memorial for them. This memorial will not be a statue but some sort of record of what they went through.

Interested people are meeting each week at Dodworth Library to create that memorial - and they need help for their cause.

The first meeting is tonight 27 March 2014 at 6.00 p.m.

The members of the group will be able to give more details after that meeting, but for now what they want is stories, big ones and lesser ones, about your relatives - and others - during the time of that Great War.

Come along with your stories, talk to your relatives and friends, and get them to come along, or to share their stories, or hand them in at the Library.

Remember that nobody is left alive from the time of the First World War - this is the first year that has been so - therefore we must do this thing for them - in memory of them - we must together make a memorial of them - that can be preserved for the future.

Do your little bit to help - share a story - a recollection no matter how simple - even if you have no-one connected with the war, tell us what your thoughts are on this matter.

For my part I will write about my Uncle and my Father's relatives who died in battle, and about my Grandfathers who both survived but were terribly injured and spent a lifetime physically marked by what they went through. I will share what I know of what happened to the families they left behind, and were at home whilst they were away soldiering, and when they returned.