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Gnr. John William Flanders
British Army Royal Field Artillery
from:17 Kilwick St, West Hartlepool, Durham
John Flanders, known as Will was my Grandfather, and told stories of him being wounded in the trenches when a German shrapnel shell landed in their gun pit. Three of his mates where killed and two wounded. He was in such a bad state that he was moved to be buried, but when two men from the burial detail picked him up to throw him into the pit, he groaned, so they got him to the hospital tent and the rest is history. He was then in hospitals at Swanage and Beaulieu Auxiliary Hospital, Harrogate near Leeds.
The two men who saved him used to visit him after the war and up to about the 1950s: he outlived them both. He came home and was a soft furnishing buyer for Hill Carters department store in West Hartlepool then in WW2 he worked as a wage clerk in I C I Billingham until he retired in the 1950s. He married Violet Ann Symons and had two daughters, Clara Grace and Winifred Patrica. I was recently lent some old photos to scan into my computer from a cousin and found a newspaper article about his time at Beaulieu hospital, and a photo of him with others and nurses on a post card.
The newspaper clipping reads, Gunner Flanders of the Light Field Artillery who has been out in Flanders, is in the Beaulieu Hosital recovering from the effects of twenty wounds. They had been subjected to a heavy bombardment by the German artillery. This went on for two hours, when a shrapnel shell burst near to Flanders and others. The shell practically fell at their feet. Three were killed and two wounded, Flanders got twenty pieces of shell in various parts of his body. Several of these have been taken out, other pieces have worked out, whilst he still has small pieces remaining. He is getting on nicely.
