Mementos

For most of my life I've had this little golden box from the First World War. Without my even realizing it, at some point during my time here in my condo, the thing reached, and quietly slipped past, its centennial. I don't even remember how it came into my possession. I suppose my maternal grandmother gave it to me at some point. But I've kept it, and quietly treasured it, ever since. Every once in a while I spot it in the drawer, and I bring it out, and I wonder over it for a quarter of an hour or so.

I'm not entirely sure who it originally belonged to, other than it's a safe assumption it belonged to someone in my family. Of my five great-grandfathers (explanation to come), four served in WWI. Both of my mother's grandfathers, and her step-grandfather, served. They were all British. My dad's paternal grandfather, a Canadian, also signed up for King and Country and headed across the ocean to serve. My father's maternal grandfather, a French Canadian, did not serve. I know how that sounds. I have no idea if he refused out of an ethnic stand (neither world war was popular among most of Canada's francophone population), or he simply had other work to do here in Canada. Somebody had to stay behind to get things done, after all.

I assume this was something handed out to the men of the British Army at Christmas of 1914. It probably had cigarettes and other treats in it. It mentions the names of the Empire's allies at the time; France, Belgium, Russia, Japan, etc., along its borders. A little patriotic wonder. Somebody either sent it home, or carried it around for years. I've stored a lot of things in this interesting little box. I'll start with the things that were in it when it came down to me.

Probably most interesting, at first blush, are the medals (front and back, below)...

For a long time, I assumed these belonged to my mother's maternal grandfather, a young man from Hampshire (Winchester, I believe) who was to die at the very beginning of the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916. His name was William Ilett. The name Ilett looks French to my eye and I thought perhaps it was Norman, but it's actually a name far older in Britain. It's actually Anglo-Saxon. Hampshire being in Wessex, there's a good chance his ancestors fought alongside Alfred the Great, and dwelt in the area ever after, until William Ilett of the Hampshire Regiment got on a boat for France in 1914 and never returned. William's wife, an Irishwoman (Rose Ilett, nee McGee) left widowed with their three daughters, eventually remarried another British soldier, a Scotsman named George Hill, whose medals these actually are. I remember him as my Poppy Hill, a jovial, doting man in Montreal, who survived my great-grandmother by many years, but as the only father my grandmother ever knew, was bolted securely onto her family as close as blood. Poppy passed away in the late 70s, around the time I was 9 or 10.

My mother's other grandfather, another William, this one a Scot named Byers (from whom she ultimately inherited her maiden name), also fought in WWI. I never met him or his wife, Ann, but my mother remembers them well; British immigrants to Montreal who arrived between the wars. I don't know very much about him. I wish I knew more. I don't really have anything of his that I'm aware of.

Another interesting thing from the box is this over-the-top whistle. When I blow it, it sounds exactly like the ones you hear in the movies that sends the Tommies up out of their trenches and to their deaths. It's a chilling sound, even now. I can't help wondering who had to blow it, and what happened when he did.

And then there's this unsettling little momento. A twisted, deformed bullet. I can't help wondering if it was the bullet that killed my great-grandfather at the Somme. Probably not, but I'll never know. Still, it's in there. Why? It meant that much to someone, once. I wish I knew its story.

Finally, there's this locket...

I know for sure that the woman on the left is my great-grandmother, Rose McGee/Ilett/Hill. I have her Canadian passport from the 1940s with that same cheery smile on a rather older face. I had long assumed the man on the right to be William Ilett. I believed it to be a keepsake he took with him to France that was returned to her when he died, but now I'm not so sure. It's just as likely that's my step-great-grandfather, George Hill. I suppose I could ask Mom, but the man there looks so young, it's possible even she won't be able to say for sure. That said, the man here doesn't look especially like the photo in George Hill's 1940 passport... so maybe this is William Ilett after all. I'll try to find out.

So the couple of other things in the box are things I added when I was young. First, there's this medal...

This was my paternal grandfather's medal from World War II. He served in Britain, France, and Italy, if I'm not mistaken. He was from northern Ontario and sailed off in early 1941, as his father before him did in World War I. My dad was born a few months later while he was away. There's about a four year gap between my dad and his next brother as a result of the war. My mother's father (also a Scottish immigrant) didn't serve in WWII, so this is really all I have in terms of family ties to that titanic struggle.

My dad left the north as a teenager to spend the next twenty-two years in the Royal Canadian Navy, stationed for part of that time in Montreal, which is how he met my mother. Ironically, it's Dad who has French Canadian roots (his mother); my mother's parents and grandparents were all British immigrants. Anyway, stored in the box is a whole slew of these brass buttons; replacements meant to be sewn onto the cuffs of his uniforms. This same lion can be seen on the standard of the Governor-General of Canada and surmounting the Canadian coat of arms.

I have a few other mementos of my dad's service in the Navy... dog tags and bosun whistle and such... but they're in another small box mostly full of his things.