My family appears to have come through two world wars unscathed. Only three members on the British side was of an age to be conscripted in either one. I've never been quite brave enough to ask my German relatives whether we lost anyone on that side. Germany's role in the two wars is an open sore for them.
In WW1 my paternal grandfather was listed in the enemy aliens register with the comment "nothing against". His brother Christian, however, was a more recent immigrant, and his wife Lina (my grandmother's niece) was visiting relatives in Germany when war was declared. Her daughter Edith was with her. Christian and the boys remained at their bakery in London, which was smashed up by anti-German protesters.
This picture is of Christian and Lina before the war, with their children.
Christian and the boys were interned in an enemy alien internment camp at Knockaloe (pronounced nok-
ay-low) on the Isle of Man, off the north-west coast of England. The boys, not yet teens, were sent home alone through war-torn Europe with luggage labels tied round their necks.
This is a postcard of some internees. Christian is bottom right, with his chair back-to-front.
This is a Christmas card Christian sent to my grandparents in 1916. Like the postcard it was produced in the camp by the internees.
While Christian was behind the wire, two of his nephews were fighting for Britain in Salonika. Many internees had sons fighting for Britain, but it made no difference to their internment.
Christian and Lina were reunited when Christian was exchanged for some injured British soldiers before the end of the war. He had aged considerably, as this picture shows.
There was a fourth child in the 1920s, and rather than return to Britain, the family went to Canada, where I visited their descendents last summer. Although some family members on both sides of the Atlantic were in the allied forces during WW2, none was lost.
Linda, pictured above on the lake beside her Canadian home, is Christian and Lina's granddaughter, one of the nine children their youngest son Albert produced with his wife Betty, who is now in her 80s. After 80 years, all arms of the family are finally in touch, all the bitter conflicts of the past forgotten.
