I’m privileged to be able to run Sophie’s Great War Tours because I get to do something everyday that I love. I wanted to share with you one of the elements of my role that is both fascinating and rewarding.
When I am receive information about a soldier—sometimes just a name, but ideally rank and regiment as well—by his surviving relatives, I am able to a dig through a range of sources to piece together the story from his signing up to coming home, or—sadly in many cases—being killed in action.
One of the men I traced last year was James Powell of Birmingham. His granddaughter, who had got in touch with me, had grown up listening to his war stories but they were incomplete, confused and often rather graphic. She wanted to know more and so she sent to me his details and a photograph of him marching down a road in France in April 1918. It was her big wish to find that road and go to spot where the photograph was taken exactly 100 years on.
I spent a week or so poring over the battalion war diaries, which allowed me to build a timeline and trace the route that James would have taken around France and Belgium. It materialised that James had fought a rear-guard action in the German Spring Offensive of 1918 and had found himself in a number of the Western Front’s toughest spots.
With this in mind, I put together the tour for James’ Granddaughter and on 8th April 2018, we arrived at the exact spot where James had his photograph snapped 100 years earlier to the very day. I know that this was a hugely special moment for Olive, and it was a privilege for me to be a part of it and to help bring it to life for her.
Please get in touch if you have an ancestor whose wartime service you’d like to know more about, and I would be delighted to assist you.
