204909 Gnr. Joseph Ward Hodgson British Army 42nd Siege Battery Royal Garrison Artillery from:Dendron, Ulverston, Lancs Joseph Hodgson was my maternal grandfather, he was the headmaster of the local C of E Board school that took children from the local villages of Gleaston, Leece, and Dendron (on the north side of Morecambe Bay) to the age of 14.
He signed up, aged 34, for service on 10th December 1915 and was called up for service with the RGA on 8th April 1916 at Fort Brockhurst, Gosport and was posted to BEF in France on 8th August 1916 and joined 42nd Siege Battery on 24th August that year, staying with his unit from that time until his discharge on 17 January 1919.
Unfortunately he died in 1946, three years before my birth, but my mother said that like so many of his generation who were close to the front, he never spoke of the War. However, she did tell the storey of going on a painting holiday to Belgium (he was a keen amateur watercolourist) in the early 1930s and all was normal until they visited a graveyard when this six foot 2 inches tall man, her daddy and a pillar of the local establishment in her home area, collapsed to the ground sobbing and shooed her and her stepmother away until he could regain his composure
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