Woman weeps after discovering tragic story of her Rotherham grandad's death, hidden for decades in photo frame
A South Yorkshire woman wept after discovering the moving story of how her grandfather died, years before she was born, after the secret was uncovered by a chance discovery.
Barbara Gamston, from Masborough, Rotherham, knew that her father, Willie Rhodes, died during World War One.
But she knew little else about his death until her daughter, Samantha Savage, removed the back of an old photo of him.
Behind the glued-on backing, she found a hidden time capsule, packed with documents dating back decades. There were letters, and records, telling of his time in the army and his tragic death in France in 1916.
They tell how the former Silverwood Colliery miner, from St Ann’s Road, Rotherham, joined the army in August 1914, joining the sixth battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment, before being sent to Grantham to train.
By July 1915, he was put on a boat from Liverpool, and sent to Gallipoli, in Turkey, arriving in August to fight near Suvla Bay. He survived four months of fighting, before being shipped back to France when commanders abandoned Gallipoli after the fighting had become a stalemate.
And so in September, 1916, his battalion was sent to The Somme, on the Western Front. By the end of the month, Willie was dead.
He is thought to have died on September 24, 1916 in fighting at Mouquet Farm, a heavily fortified position on Germany’s second line of defence, nicknamed Mucky Farm by the British soldiers.
He was aged just 30.
Willie’s body was never found - but his name is on the Thiepval Memorial, the monument to British troops who died on the Somme who have no known grave.
Samantha Savage, from Rawmarsh, Barbara’s daughter and Willie’s great granddaughter, said the family had not known any of the details, and if they were ever known, they had been long forgotten.
She believes they must have been hidden away for at least 50 years, as it contained information that one of her relatives, who has now died, had been trying to discover for many years.
She said: “The back of the photo was glued onto a backing. I just prised it off. I don’t know what made me do it. I had been looking at it and just got a feeling that I should.
“We usually go to Rawmarsh War Memorial, but this time I had gone to Rotherham, and I took the photo with me.
“It means such a lot to find out what happened. It is amazing. Mum was even more amazed than me, and when she saw what we had found, she sat and cried.
“They were happy tears that we had found what we had, but sad tears about what had happened to her grandfather.”