Ghosts of soldiers: memories of my grandfather's first world war service

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/03/seymour-norton-taylor-first-world-war-service-memories

Version 0 of 1.

A picture above the fire dominated the sitting room of my grandfather, a veteran of three wars by the time his legs were blown off near Ypres in October 1915. It depicted ghosts of soldiers walking away from trenches during the first world war.

Though he had placed the picture in a most prominent position, and he continued visibly to suffer pain from crude amputations, he never talked about the event that came close to killing him. Seymour Norton-Taylor had left school in the 1890s to set up a ranch and livery stables in Alberta, Canada, with his brother Bracey. Their parents had retired to Orlando, Florida, and in 1898, Seymour and Bracey signed up to join the Florida Volunteers during the Spanish-American War.

That dispute, over Cuba, did not last long. Seymour, ever restless, did not have to wait long for the next opportunity to sign up.

He signed an oath of loyalty to Queen Victoria, her heirs and successors, and joined the Imperial Light Horse to fight the Boers in South Africa. He escaped from the Siege of Ladysmith and once described swimming with the horses across a river. "A nasty business," he called it, "river full of crocs, and horses' heels".

After the Boer War he returned to his beloved ranch. It was not long before the next conflict.

On 14 August 1914, nine days after Canada formally declared war on Germany my grandfather enlisted, entering "rancher" as his occupation, in the Canadian Light Infantry.

A little over a year later, on 31 October 1915, his legs were lacerated by shell fragments. As gangrene set in, his right leg was amputated just above the knee, his left leg just below the knee.

A month later, he was described in his medical record as "still dangerously ill". In 1916, his left leg was further shortened.

He was sent to Broadstairs to convalesce. But the east Kent seaside town was considered by the Canadian authorities to be vulnerable to long-range Germany artillery. Along with his fellow wounded, he was transferred to the Old Royal Hotel at Matlock Bath in Derbyshire, which was taken over by the Canadians and used as a military hospital.

My grandfather was a fiercely independent-minded, obstreperous person, characteristics almost certainly exacerbated by the intermittent but regular sharp pains he suffered. He became an official representative of the convalescing soldiers, a position that brought him into constant conflict with the hospital's commanding officer. In May 1918, the officer reported that my grandfather "has never been satisfactory". He added: "He is unfortunate in having two artificial legs which make his efforts to get about appear very depressing to the patients."

The commanding officer continued: "Owing to his disability ... I have to give him one of the very best senior officer's rooms on the first floor. He does not consider that he is under any authority here and his actions and demeanour is to say the least, not a good example for the discipline of the rest of my staff."

Furthermore, noted the CO, he went away every weekend "without any notification". Where he was going was to see his future wife, an Irish nurse who first cared him at Broadstairs, where she was then on the staff of the local hospital.

He remained as active as he could be. During the second world war, he was a full-time air raid warden on the Isle of Thanet in Kent, a frontline job he revelled in, wearing a tin hat as he manipulated his three-wheeled chair, or, as his niece put it, "waving his stick furiously at the German hit-and-run raiders which were part of the daily scene".

I played cards and other games with him (and cheated, as he could not hide his hands). Every quarter of an hour or so, he doubled up for a few seconds from the pain his stumps were still causing him. He refused to talk about his experiences of the first world war. I used to fantasise about a battle in which a German shell burst around his trench.

It was not until after his death that I saw a record of what had caused his severe, and near fatal, injuries.

It was a terrible accident. "During the month of October 1915", a soldier at the scene recorded, "Pte Clutterbuck found a nose-cap of a shell. He took it into the dugout, where he accidentally dropped it. An explosion followed with the result that Capt. Norton-Taylor who was in the dugout was also severely wounded. He [Clutterbuck] afterwards died of his injuries. I was near the dugout and heard the explosion". My grandfather died in 1963, aged 86.