With a father who served and two uncles who perished on the battlefields, the First World War had a profound effect on Chelsea Pensioner, Don Crassweller’s family.
Edmund Joseph Buisseret – the father of Chelsea Pensioner, Simon De Buisseret – had just joined a monastery in the sleepy town of Hereford, when the First World War broke out. His two older brothers joined the chaplaincy, but as Edmund was only a novice, he joined the Royal Garrison Artillery and was immediately uprooted from his quiet existence as a prospective monk and sent to the Somme.
Chelsea Pensioner Patrick Moir only learnt of his father’s experiences in the First World War when he reached the age of 85; his father had been called up to serve in 1917 when he was a young lad of 19.
Chelsea Pensioner, Steve Lovelock, lost his father in the Second World War, leaving his young mother with the difficult task of bringing up a small child alone. Unable to cope with the pressures of single parenthood, Steve’s grandparents stepped in to care for the young child.
