It's not often you get to hear the haunting stories from the trenches in the Great War straight from the horses mouth. It was an unexpected privilege when 85 year old former Pt Edwin "Eddie' Bigwood of the Royal Worcester regiment recounted an astonishing memory in conversation with grandson Marot, having never spoken a word about the war in all his years.
Fondly known as "Grampy' to the family, Eddie then talked of nothing else…perhaps the decades that had passed finally allowed him to share this many stories.
These days the Imperial War Museum houses hours of recordings of his WW1 memoirs. When he was just 18 years old a shell burst a few feet away from him, burying him under the soil of Belgium and profoundly deafening him for the rest of his life.
Grampy is heard recounting another such story in ‘Shall I Sing To You?' and Eddie is the soldier represented on the print.