THIS year marks the 100th anniversary of the end of fighting in the First World War.

The nation is staging special remembrances for the more than 700,000 of the British troops who were killed in action.

How many of us will spare a thought for the heroes of that conflict? The shattered families left behind to struggle on without the safety net of a welfare state?

One of those families was that of 35-year-old Irishman Pte Arthur Robert Moore of the Royal Engineers, killed by a shell blast at Ypres on the night of October 5, 1917.

Several days later a letter of condolence from Arthur’s commanding officer was received by the widowed 31-year-old Edith Annie Moore at School Street, Earlestown, where she lived with their four sons, aged nine months to 10.

From then until her remarriage in 1924 the family survived on the meagre amount she could earn by taking in washing from neighbours. Helped, so one of my four uncles told me, by the fruit and vegetables the older lads managed to liberate when the local greengrocer’s back was turned. Two other children had died at birth, so now there were not six young mouths to feed, an extra burden that could have led to the workhouse. She had no extended family.

When I was about 14 my grandmother Edith, then living at Stanley Street, Earlestown, showed me the condolence letter and said: “I gave a man to this country and got only this in return.”

The letter, read: “Dear Mrs Moore, I regret to have to inform you of the death of your husband in action, on the night of the 5th, while nobly doing his duty. As his section officer may I convey to you on behalf of myself and the section, our deepest and heartfelt sympathy with you in the terrible blow you have sustained.

“We all feel it very deeply, as your husband was most popular in the section, and a splendid worker. We have one consolation – he met his death instantaneously, being hit by a shell, and suffered no pain.

“We brought him back well behind the line and I am having a cross erected over his grave, which I will see is well looked after while we are in this area. I only wish I could name the spot but as you know the censor forbids it. If I ever have the opportunity of letting you know, I shall certainly do so. Again expressing our deepest sympathy – I remain, yours sincerely, J McCarthy, 2nd Lieut, R.E.”

Shortly before her death in 1973 she confessed that Arthur had always inhabited her dreams. His name is inscribed on the war memorial at the junction of Market Street and Tamworth Street.

Arthur lost his life, but my gran and those left behind lived a lost lifetime.

By Lawrence McGowan