227292 Pte. James Sines British Army 2nd Btn. Cheshire Rgt. from:Kensington, London (d.8th May 1915) Jimmy Sines was a family member adopted by my 2x gt. aunt Lydia Emma (nee Greaves) and her husband James Sines, a regular Army veteran. A very childlike-looking lad of barely 21, he was lost without trace at the 2nd Battle of Ypres on 8th May 1915. His devastated parents received £11 in exchange for their boy.
His name is known to those who remain in England, America and Australia. His photograph is cherished and his war medal photocopied and distributed amongst the family. He is remembered as 'poor little Jimmy Sines'. So few of his 2nd Btn. Cheshire regiment survived the pulverising German bombardment. Its remnants were combined with others and moved on to the next hell hole.
Because Jimmy's friends were wiped out with him, no one was able to tell his parents exactly what happened. Poor Lydia and James were left believing Jimmy drowned in the mud and it haunted them all their days. I prefer to hope his sufferings were brief and he and his immediate comrades were blown to oblivion.
The Sines family in the mid 1800s were travelling basket and chair makers, who were `on the tramp' round Surrey following the cycle of harvesting, making and hawking. By the later decades this branch of the family were settled around the Epsom Common area, seemingly escaping the harsher life of travelling, seasonal recourse to the workhouse and the vagrancy and semi-criminal life of some of the younger, more feckless cousins. Jimmy's father, James Sines, is believed to have been a relative rather than his biological father. However, they strongly resembled one another. James Snr. hardly spent any time with his parents and siblings and joined the Army, serving in two Burma campaigns. He spent much of his career hospitalised with a variety of fevers, malaria etc and the ubiquitous 'ague'. It is not known how he met my 2x gt aunt whose parents also lived in Epsom, but were slightly better off, being a bailiff officer of Epsom court and ex-metropolitan policeman. James Snr. was an upright Victorian man who wore his campaign medals on special occasions with pride, but must have known only too well what lay ahead for Jimmy when the boy enlisted for the Great War. James and Lydia never recovered from their loss.
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