1917

A reworked image-I took this a couple of years ago- it took on a new meaning when I discovered a war grave of a lone WW1 soldier at the rear of the graveyard of our village church- the grave is some fifty to sixty yards from our boundary. The selection of items in this still life are co-incindentally quite interesting. The date on the coin, 1917, is the date that the soldier was killed. Bovril was, according to my recent research, known amongst other things as’war food’! At the onset of trench warfare and the horrific injuries suffered by the troops medical supplies often ran out and herbal remedies were used, Lavender being one of the principle ingredients. The Godfrey Phillips tobacco tin is significant in that this firm issued cigarette cards depicting army company badges, some published in 1917. I believe The Royal Engineers may have been one of them- the soldier belonged to that company. The purse is very old and has ‘A present from Cleethorpes’ embossed in the leather- this was a popular place to visit for local people. One final coincidence, whilst researching the history of our cottage, which dates back to around 1860 we were given a very old photograph which I digitally restored. The lady that gave us the photo was very pleased and researched it a little more, coming up with various names of the people standing outside the cottages- the family surname , possibly the parents (?) was the one on the soldiers grave.
So, as you can see, my seemingly random selection of nostalgic objects proved more meaningful than I thought possible.