Section 1
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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A HERO Section 1 |
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AN INTRODUCTION TO 'WILL'
The act of 'going to war' is as foreign to most people today as it must have been in the early part of the last century.
I am researching the life of a real man who did just that. He came from a normal working/middle class background (his grandfather was a 'mariner'). We might class him as ordinary or average, but although he was just like you and me, he was no ordinary man. The sights he witnessed, the actions in which he participated and his personal losses we can hardly imagine. I believe that anyone, Officer or Soldier, who endured the awful conditions in the trenches, or who walked, crawled or ran across the killing ground of No-Man's-Land was a HERO and those things were this man's life for over three years in the early part of last century. He was a professional soldier before the Great War and so he was in some ways prepared, more than most perhaps, for the shocking experience of what was to be called The War to end all Wars. He was born a Victorian, he lived life as an Edwardian and swore allegiance to the new King George V in 1911. He usually signed himself "Will".
His day to day life in 1914 would have been alien to us: gaslight was normal in most households; only 30 years before Karl Benz & Gottlieb Daimler were putting the first ever cars on the public highways of Germany; and in 1909 Louis Bleriot was the first man to fly the English Channel. Will would have seen the first car to drive in his home town, and he would have witnessed, in awe, the first aeroplanes in the skies above England. Great Britain was still Great, our Empire still dominated the map of the world and Imperialism was still spelt with a capital letter, not yet a by-word for oppression and greed.
Expectations were different from today. A man from the working classes looked forward to little and had little to lose, except his family. A teenager might leave school at 13 years old, and he would work long and hard for 5/- (25p) a week. A man might get less than £2 a week for working 12 hours a day and spend as much as half of that renting his accommodation. People knew their place, a young man deferring, without rancour, to his elders, and those elders knowing instinctively that their age gave them automatic wisdom and foresight. The class system was understood and accepted by most and to be a servant or a maid was normal, even aspired to, but despite the apparent anomalous society of the time a sense of loyalty to England, to the king and to the country's leaders was felt by most people, much more than today.
The full name of our young hero is William George Ashby Bentley. He was born to a military family in 1890 in Shornecliffe Camp, the army garrison at Sandgate, near Folkestone in Kent. He was part of something that even today is an appalling memory. He wrote extensively to his mother and I am the owner of some of those letters. Most of the information contained here is from other historians, but these letters along with post cards and research from actual battalion war diaries written at the time and in the trenches are 'original source material'. Using the facts as they really happened and overlaying them with the letters I am writing his tale. I have had to fill in gaps in Will's life with a fictional account of what may have happened to him and those around him. I do not know Will and I do not know his family, so I am greatly presuming on him and his life. I apologise unreservedly for the intrusion, but understanding his life may help me in mine.
I have not yet tried to contact the living relatives of William Bentley, maybe they'll contact me.... William's Mother's name was Edith, and for the early part of this narrative her surname is Barnard. During her life she was also known as Mrs Bentley and as Mrs Simpson, and in 1915 she married Mr Landers. Her son’s name was Bentley... It was the mystery of his mother's four surnames (Barnard, Bentley, Simpson and Landers) plus Will's terrible injuries that originally inspired me to look further. Will there be a dark secret revealed in the following pages? Read on..........
LAST UPDATE OF SECTION 1 - 20/7/2002
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