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Showing posts with the label Gallapoli

Thinking about a Letter from Home

James and Nettie AINSLIE   (Cairo, Egypt, 1917)   My grandad, James AINSLIE, like so many young men during WW1, answered the call to "Fight for King and Country".      It must have been an exciting, anxious, and sad time as he left home to enlist with the 1/4 (The Border) Battalion Territorial Forces of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) stationed in Galashiels.   At the time, he was a young man of 22, still living with his parents in Ednam, in the Scottish border country, and working as a ploughman.   He was part of a large agricultural family with 7 siblings, but it is possible that his youngest sister, Nettie, was his favourite.   When James went to war, Nettie would have been about 4 years old.   The above photo taken in Cairo, Egypt 1917, shows him holding a paper in his hands (probably a letter) and it looks like he is thinking of the letter and the letter writer.   T he young girl on the top right of the picture...