SUFFERING IN SILENCE by Linda Gillard
My father, Charles Gillard My father lost his leg at the age of 19 whilst serving in France with the Royal Artillery. His bullet-shattered leg was amputated in a field hospital and he was lucky to be one of the early beneficiaries of penicillin. From an early age, I grew up with tales of horror and heroism told as I sat at my father’s (artificial) knee, but thanks to his macabre Spike Milligan-esque sense of humour, Dad’s war stories were full of black comedy and devoid of self-pity. His own father had come home physically intact from the trenches of WWI, but of his experiences on the Western Front we knew nothing, since he never spoke of them, not even to his wife. So it was possibly on the cards that one day I would write a novel about a soldier. But the aspect of military service I’ve written about is one that, if Dad had understood, he wouldn’t have wanted to discuss. Nor would he have heard it talked about much. Dad might have referred to “shell-shock”, but he wouldn’t hav...