Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Great War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Great War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
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1206462
L/Cpl. James "Dodger" Higgins
British Army 17th (Rosebery's Bantams) Battalion Royal Scots
from:14 Corn St, Glasgow
My grandad James Higgins volunteered to fight in WW1, I don't know much about my grandfather's time in WW1 (I think he fought at the Somme) other than my mum said he sent all the money he could home to my grandmother who was expecting their first child.
One Christmas he received a letter from my granny from home in which she said she'd included a postal order for him to treat himself. He delightedly told all his mates that he'd treat them all to a drink only to find she had sent him a postal order for a shilling!! Hahaha!! He said if she'd have been standing in front of him he'd have shot her, she later told him she didn't send more incase he was dead by the time her letter arrived as she didn't want to waste good money.
During WW2 he dyed his hair (it had turned white after his time in France) forged his d.o.b and volunteered and went off to train for the barrage balloons down south, until they discovered his true age and sent him home, I think he got drunk and spilled the beans.
He was a real old soldier and when I was little I loved how he would fold all my clothes and stack them up neatly on the chair every night before I went to bed.