David Hough knew that his father and grandfather had been put to the test in the world wars. His research has laid their ghosts to rest, says Claire Vaughan… although an uncanny incident suggests otherwise
At 7.30am on 1 July 1916, British forces who’d been engaged in a week-long artillery
bombardment of German trenches near the River Somme in northern France were preparing
to launch a huge surprise attack. According to the Imperial War Museums’ website (iwm.org.uk/history/what-happened
-on-the-first-day-of-the -battle-of-the-somme): “Many of the infantry who went over the top were volunteers of 1914, including
Pals battalions made up of friends, relatives and workmates serving side by side.
This was their first experience of a major action in the largest attack the British
Army had yet conducted.”
A premature mortar explosion alerted the Germans to the plan and they opened fire, mowing down the advancing British soldiers in a sustained and bloody machine-gun and rifle attack. On this first day of the Somme offensive there were 57,470 British casualties, of whom 19,240 lost their lives. Achieving very little, their advance has become one of the greatest symbols of the futility of war.
Events that day had far-reaching consequences for families, permeating generations with profound melancholy and hardship – including David Hough’s. Even as a child, David instinctively knew something wasn’t right. “I put some of that down to what my father Raymond, known as Ray, took away from the Second World War. He was still a teenager in that war, a volunteer fireman fighting bombs and fires in Plymouth.”
David, who lives in Poole in Dorset, was keen to uncover his forebears’ wartime experiences. His story of hard work, archival luck – and possibly a supernatural experience – began 20 years ago with a family Bible.
BIBLICAL INSPIRATION
“I inherited the Bible from a cousin, and in it were some details of my Cornish family history on my mum’s side. I used it as a starting point for my wider family research. It gave me the idea that I really needed to go back and find out the things that my father was reluctant to share.”
Ray had suffered a nervous breakdown at the end of the Second World War, which affected him for much of his life. He spoke about the war only once, when he was in his 80s. “Driving back through Plymouth one day, we came to a junction and my father looked across at a nearby wall,” explains David. “He said, ‘In the war, I hid behind that w
