28 September 2016

William Smith

With a name like William Wallace Roy Smith I thought that finding this soldier's family would be easy to track down. That was far from the case.
What I found interesting in William's service record was he was a prisoner of war. The details about this are a bit thin. He was originally reported missing then confirmed as a POW. It wasn't until December 1918 that he was repatriated to England.
I've filled a index card with crammed notes about William's family but getting to the current generation proved impossible. Ancestry provided some information but nothing concrete after 1980.  In desperation I asked Anne to revisit the research. Similarly, she hit many brick walls. We were on the verge of giving up when I did a last check of Ancestry to find some new information that lead us to William's grandson.
Thank you to Alan Kitchen who sent me the medal in 2010.
The returned medal tally is now 1935.

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