ID:EOHP_FOULIS_ESTATE_04DESCRIPTION:This audio extract is from the Evanton Oral History Project, a project undertaken in 1991-92 by Adrian Clark.
In this extract, sisters Marianne Chamier and Joan Paton (née Gascoigne) share their childhood memories of the First World War.
Interviewer: And going back first of all to the First World War, you have some recollection of that time, do you?
Marianne: Well, I remember what I told you. I remember being at breakfast one morning and my mother saying to my father, 'I suppose you'll have to go' and realised it meant he'd be, was a, I suppose, a Territorial and was going, would have to go off to France.
Interviewer: Mmm-hmm.
Marianne: I remember that. And I remember him, the first time he came home on leave, I was sleeping in my mother's bedroom, and he, she didn't know he was coming and he, in the middle of the night, he threw stones up at the bedroom window and I remember being woken by the pebbles being thrown at the window. And I had to go down and open the door. And I do remember my grandfather coming down to Blairgowrie to tell my mother, her brother had been killed, her only brother had been killed. You know. You better tell the story of when he was killed because I didn't realise he was killed after the armistice.
Joan: Well he was sent out with a sergeant and I think another chap, to clear out shell holes of Germans. The Germans were hiding in these very deep shell holes, you know, you see them in pictures of the war.
Marianne: After the armistice?
Joan: Just after the armistice, yes. And they came on a nest of them and they still had their rifles and ammunition with them, these chaps - they hadn't thrown them away like most of them - and they thought they'd better try and escape so they upped to their rifles and Uncle Hec was the only one who was shot.
Marianne: He was only just twenty-one, wasn't he? Had his twenty-first birthday when he was killed, I think.
Interviewer: And do you remember him?
Marianne: Yes, quite well. And of course in those days they went out to see him in France which seems so extraordinary now. I suppose stayed in an hotel where, did they stay?
Joan: I think they went to Paris, or something.
Marianne: Yes. Because Granny, I think Granny and Grandpa both went out and certainly one of the aunts went, I think, too.PLACENAME:FoulisDISTRICT:DingwallOLD COUNTY/PARISH:ROSS: KiltearnCREATOR (AV):Marianne Chamier & Joan PatonDATE OF RECORDING:1991; 1992PERIOD:1990sSOURCE:Evanton Oral History ProjectCOLLECTION:Evanton Oral History ProjectAsset ID:41135KEYWORDS:
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