Ouch! A Blighty!

[imd6662]

I thought people here might be interested in these items I just brought home with me from my elderly great-aunt's house.

I am 99% confident that they are grim souvenirs of a wound sustained by my great-uncle James Buckley Kenworthy on 4 July 1916 while serving with the 9th Duke of Wellington's at the Somme.

Jim was wounded in the arm 'by shrapnel' (according to a newspaper report) and the wound was serious enough for him to be sent to London to convalesce in the Italian Hospital. If it dampened his spirits he didn't let it show, writng home to his mother telling how they'd been let out to go to church and skipped off to visit Hyde Park instead!

From reading the fantastic resources on this forum, and other sites referred to, it seems obvious that the items are a shrapnel ball, weighing half an ounce -- typical British 18-pounder load?, and a blasted base plug from a Mills No 5. Presumably the hal'penny took some of the blast!

So either this was the result of 'friendly fire', a grenade mishap, or jsut being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Any theories?

Jim's luck didn't persist. He was killed at Messines on 7 June 1917 while serving with the 10th Dukes. His body was never found.

[MACRAE]

Ouch indeed now that had to hurt .

Dan

[1st east yorks]

Very interesting to see.Every picture tells a story.This is one mans personal story in a very impersonal war.

Thanks for showing us.

Anthony.

[Droocoo]

owwwwwwwwww

[swellal]

During training on the ranges in the 1960s in Canada, I had a base plug from a hand grenade go over my head and through the windshield of the truck I was beside. I always felt lucky, but that day someone was looking out for me.

Those base plugs were nasty things to be hit by.