Sunday, January 18, 2009

Long lost Herd

We had lunch with F and T yesterday. They'd been to see some other relatives last weekend, who had been sorting through various family things. Among the items was this memorial for Robert Herd, who by his birth date would appear to have been John's great uncle. Not 100% sure - he's never been mentioned before. He's definitely family, though - the picture of him in his uniform could very easily be a picture of Travis. They also have the hat that he's wearing in the picture, which was returned to his parents with his dog tags.

As you can see, he was killed (at 21) in the Great War, but apparently did quite a bit of fighting before that point.

[There are actually 3 Herds in the picture - Robert, me (bottom left) and Travis (plaid shirt, bottom right).]

Here's a closeup of the inscription:


It's really thought-provoking - he looks so young. One of the other things in the packet was the newspaper page where his obituary was listed - everyone on the page was "son" or "brother" and most of them were around the same age as Robert.

I was going to write about some other stuff but it all sounds a bit trite - I'll post again tomorrow or later in the week.

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