First World War – a Harringay boy went to war

My father, Douglas Marr was a survivor of the First World War. One hundred years ago this month, when at the age of nineteen he was living in the family rented home at 63 Warwick Gardens, he volunteered to join up. Douglas enlisted as a Private in the 7^th London Regiment. He served as a foot-soldier in France throughout the war and was involved in front-line fighting at the Battle of the Somme and at Ypres.

Although Douglas suffered from a gas attack, which left him with lifetime bronchial problems and had machine-gun bullet wounds in his shoulder, he was sent back to the front as soon as he was deemed fit. I was born in 1940 and it was the second war that featured in my childhood, but I remember trying to get my father to talk about his war. Typically, like many of the men who had been through that experience he refused to speak about it – the only words I recall him saying were that “they looked after the horses better than they did the men!”

Douglas was a quiet self-effacing man and throughout the time I knew him he was a pacifist and socialist. I am proud to be his son and I still have his war medals. Douglas died in 1961 and I regret it was only after his death that I read more about the First World War (including Robert Graves “Goodbye to All That”) and had any real understanding of the horrors he must have gone through.

Colin