'it was just our duty that we did'

Monument in St Nicholas Churchyard, Whitehaven,  to the town's sons who lost their lives
during the Liberation of Europe

Family photograph taken 2007

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My Whitehaven father and cousin-in-law both survived the Normandy Landings and the Liberation of Europe.

This family snapshot is of my uncle Charlie, my father's oldest brother, in the dress uniform of the Seaforth Highlanders before he was posted to the Western Front. The letter just to his father (below) was published in The Whitehaven News of  9 November 1916. Amongst other things, he says that '...it was just our duty that we did, but we had it rough when...' so perhaps he didn't want to burden his mother with worrying details. But tragically he would predecease her by about 5 years. He was killed aged 43 in the 1941 William Pit disaster doing his duty as Deputy of getting his men out first leaving a widow and two young sons.

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Together, the memorial and the letter plus the events described in In Our Fathers' Footsteps are testimony, not to the bravery of one man, but to the extraordinary bravery, sung and unsung, of ordinary men and women on both sides in extraordinary circumstances.
Charles James Martin MM was my uncle whom I hardly knew because I was only three when he died and I am proud of him.