How did they feel?

There are four people in this photograph.  Grandma, my mother and her brother.  And an inset of my grandad.

Mother, Nancy, is less than two years old.  Her brother, Jack, around four.  Ted, my grandfather was away at war.  He was a bandsman and stretcher bearer.  

Ted had gone away when my Nancy was just three weeks old.  Jack would have been just over two.  I doubt if either of them could remember him.

But Emma, my grandmother would.  She would have heard too about the horrors of the trenches where Ted would have  been carrying injured men to the casualty stations.  He never spoke about the horrors he saw.  

How did each feel?  I'm sure both Ted and Emma felt afraid.  Was there pride? frustration? loneliness? determination?   Emma would talk to Jack and Nancy about their father but Nancy would have no recollection of him and Jack would have very little.  How did they feel when Dad, who had just been a name, came home to the farm?

Today I am thinking about those who died in The Great War, the "war to end all wars", but I am also be thinking of the other people, living through fear and loneliness, and thanking God that Ted eventually came home.

And praying that something will indeed end all wars.