Beginnings of the search

My grandfather, Gerald Fieldhouse, passed away at the end of April 2013. Thanks to his clear memories, we had a good picture of his childhood, his experiences in the Desert Air Force in World War II and his life back home. So that his great-grandchildren could get a better picture of their relations - spread across the Shetlands, southern England and Switzerland - a basic family tree of his descendants was put together.

My stepmother also got out a family tree that showed the predecessors of my grandmother, Mona Fieldhouse (née Bell). It had been put together upon her death in 2007 and showed that two of her uncles (my great, great uncles), Herbert Dobson Bell and Redford Bell, had died in the Great War in 1915 and 1917 respectively. A third uncle, Cornelius, had been wounded but survived the war.

Only a week before my grandfather took ill and died, my daughters and I had stopped off at the Vimy Ridge Canadian War Memorial while on our way over to England for a spring holiday. Little did we know that were standing almost exactly mid way between Herbert's and Redford's last moments on earth, at the nearby Battle of Loos (1915) and the 2nd Battle of the Scarpe (1917). At the time I knew almost nothing about them, having perhaps heard their names mentioned once or twice.

Details on their demise had been hard to come by in 2007 but now it has become a lot easier with the wealth of information available online, if you know where to look. This blog will show some of what I have been able to find out about their last weeks, days and hours.