“And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds”.

Ninety years since the end of the First World War.

Passengers at Paddington station on Armistice Day, 11 November 1919. stopped for two minutes silence to remember those who never returned. Most of the men have taken their hats off out of respect.

Over 25,000 Great Western Railway workers were killed in the war. Railway companies commemorated the end of the war in honor of their workers who had been killed or injured in action.

In remembrance of my grandfather Lance Corporal Frank Herbert Sims, 546245, 12th Sanitary Sect., Royal Army Medical Corps who died aged 34. He survived the war only to die – still in service, in Italy – from the pandemics it let lose. Family lore has it that he was a gentle man who played the violin. It’s not just the staggering numbers of the dead from that war- it’s the individual aching gap in families from any war that lasts for generations. Buried in that same military cemetery are 448 other men from so many outposts of the then empire – India, Malta, Egypt, Ceylon and particularly the West Indies – Jamaica and Trinidad. 
Photo of Taranto town extension cometary, Sicily.
from the CWG