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Sgt. James Shields
British army 14th Btn. Royal Irish Rifles
from:Belfast, Ireland
My father James Shields fought in WW1, a long time before any of his children were born. We would have said that it was as if our father had two lives. One as a single man who got caught up in the worst conflict that the world had ever seen. A time when he lost the whole of his left arm in a battle far from home. Then quite a while later he met and married my mother, a much younger woman, and went on to have 4 children.
As we were growing up WW1 was a dim and distant memory and, as far as my father was concerned, it wasn't something he wanted to discuss much with his children. When he eventually died, aged 93, he left us with many happy memories of a great father and medals and papers from his time in the war. More recently my brothers, sister and I have started to piece together his war-time story. We have discovered photographs that we didn't know existed and have just recently discovered what our father looked like as a young man. It was amazing to see him with both arms and looking amazingly like my son, his grandson at the same age 100 years apart.
We are incredibly proud of him and how he survived the unimaginable conflict that he endured from 1914 until his discharge in 1917.
