Digging in the trenches

Moving to Belgium was the catalyst for Mike Walker to examine the WWI service of his grandfather, writes Brendan Daly.

Captain Maurice Walker with his mother and sister, after receiving the Military Cross at Buckingham Palace.

When Mike Walker was growing up in Dublin in the 1980s, he liked to rummage through his grandfather’s World War I memorabilia. Walker’s grandfather, who died in 1948, was Captain Maurice Walker. He served in the Royal Garrison Artillery on the Western Front.

Among his grandfather’s hat, maps, and diaries, Walker found a faded photograph of a pile of rubble. Handwritten in pencil on the back of the photograph was ‘Manor Farm’.

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