By Denise Winterman

BBC News Magazine



"She told me my father was dead and I would have to be the man of the house. I thought 'mum, I'm only five years old'. But I had to stand up and be counted - and I did."

To this day being told the news of his father's death is still vivid in Donald Overall's memory. Over 500,000 children lost their father in World War I. It was the biggest loss of fathers in modern British history. Those who did return carried the mental and physical scars.

Donald Overall, then and now, became the man of the house... aged five

Remembrance of the 750,000 British soldiers who lost their lives has long been one of the nation's most important rituals and will be marked on Sunday, along with Armistice Day.

But the impact on their children is an aspect of the tragedy that's rarely explored. So how did they cope? And for those who did get their dad back, could home life ever return to normality after the horror of what their fathers had been through?

When war began in 1914 more than two million men dutifully volunteered to serve King and country. Fathers enlisted alongside young, single men in a wave of patriotic fervour.

Treasured memories

As the pressure on the British forces increased, the government was forced to introduce conscription and raise the upper age limit for service from 38 to 41. It meant even more fathers went to war.

WATCH See the 10 O'Clock News series on the last surviving veterans of WWI Watch the series here

Home leave meant Mr Overall's father could put him to bed for the first time ever and it remains one of his most treasured memories.

"To me he was everything, he was a man that I wanted to be like," he says. "He carried me upstairs on his left shoulder... my head was against his face and I can remember seeing his ears, and smelling his khaki and smelling his tobacco."

But many fathers were virtual strangers to their children and had to work hard to win the trust of a young child who they had yet to establish a bond with.

Returning to the front after was hard. The awful carnage of trench warfare was often left out of letters home. The men chose to deny the horror by putting on a brave face and clinging to comforting events at home, like birthdays.

Lost for words

"My mother had told my dad that my second birthday was coming along and I wanted an engine," says George Musgrave. "He'd been injured at the time and somehow... he drew me an engine and that is an engine that's remained vividly in my mind and has always linked me to him."

From 1916 onwards the numbers killed on the Western Front increased dramatically. The bad news arrived by telegram or by letter and the impact was devastating.

"Mother opened it, she read the telegram and collapsed on the floor... I was holding on to her skirt," recalls Mr Overall.

Fathers were scarred by the war

But for children with no, or little, memory of their fathers, the effect of their deaths was incomprehensible.

"I boasted about it to my friends I'm afraid," says Charles Chilton. "I didn't know my father, I didn't have any feeling for him, he was a photograph hanging on the wall. I'd never seen him, never touched him."

The worst news of all for a family was to learn that their father had been shot for cowardice. It was the fate of 306 British soldiers to be shot at dawn.

'Hard to cry'

Harry Farr was shot at dawn on 18 October 1916. For his daughter Gertrude Harris, and her mother, the tragedy was compounded by shame. Her father's war pension was stopped and they were asked to leave their rented accommodation. They were homeless and penniless.

They went to work for a wealthy family in Hampstead, and were treated well. But their situation always felt precarious and Gertrude was told to behave and never to cry in case she was heard.

Photos were often all children to remind them

When the war ended in 1918 the soldiers who returned home were feted as heroes. But carrying the scars of fighting in the trenches often made their reintegration into normal family life difficult. The full horror of their ordeal often remained unspoken.

"I remember asking my mother why my father slept in the way he did," says Mabel McCoy. "I don't know how he managed but he wrapped the sheet and the blanket completely round his head... covering his eyes with just his nose sticking out.

"My mother's answer was that he had to sleep like that in the war because he was very afraid of rats.

"It was very difficult for me as a small child to understand why my father never spoke about his experiences in the war."

The returning soldiers had been promised homes fit for heroes, but with the post-war economy in turmoil many had to endure further hardship and poverty.

New breadwinners

It was most difficult of all for war widows, who had to get by on a meagre army pension. Some remarried, often for the sake of the children. But the loss of so many men in the war meant that competition for their hand in marriage was fierce.

Even when a woman was successful in finding a new breadwinner it was often difficult for the children to accept their new father, as Mabel Howatt's mother discovered.

Letters were a lifeline for soldiers

For some the battles continued. Gertrude Harris campaigned for the pardon of the 306 men shot by firing squad for cowardice. It took 15 years to win the case.

"I was so happy for it to be proven that my father was not a coward and he was a brave soldier as my mother said," she says. "Every year when she watched the Armistice she used to see the veterans walking along and say 'my Harry should have been amongst them'."

For others, they are still mourning the loss of their father and always will.

"I miss him, I missed him when I was a boy and now I miss him as an old man," says Mr Overall. "I've never forgotten, I never will, never will."

What Did You Do in the Great War, Daddy? will be broadcast on Sunday, 11 November at 2000 GMT on BBC Four.

hanging out the upstairs window whilst her Mother made the beds and she saw a man with red hair and glasses coming up the street and said "Daddy's coming home" and her Mum came to the window and without a word ran down the stairs and they all ran down to meet him! I always thought it was such a lovely story!

Shel, Manchester

My mother's father went off to WW1 an ordinary enough young man, according to family history, but he returned home, after he'd taken part in the Battle of the Somme and God knows what other horrors, as a wife-beating drunkard who scared and shamed all his 8 children. My aunt, who was a most loving person, once said of him: "he was a horrid little man and I hated him" which really shocked me. That was our little tragedy - think of it multiplied across all the countries that took part in that conflict and all the others since.

Anne , Leicester, UK

I remember my late grandmother telling me that her father came home on leave and when he was at the station waiting for his train to go back to the front said to his brother-in-law look after them I am not coming back. He was killed a couple of days later and nine months after his leave my grandmother was born. My great grandmother did remarry and have other children but her new husband was never accepted by my grandmother and her elder brother and sister and from what I have been told he did not accept them either.

Nicola Tustain, Bury st Edmunds - England

My Dad, who died in 2000, lost his father in Ypres in 1918. My grandfather was only 21 and my father was just 18 months old so was deprived of growing up with him. But he knew all about his dad, the wonderful man he was, a Sunday School teacher and clerk on the railways at Stockport in Cheshire. He told me his father was never out of his thoughts especially when he joined the RAF to fight in the Second World War. I was fortunate to have grown up with such a brilliant dad and despite discussing the subject with him many times, can still not contemplate how difficult it must have been for him to be without a dad himself and from an early age having to become "the man of the house" with a mother and older sister. I have visited my grandfather's grave in a small Belgian village many times and went there with my father. His loss is just as real to me as it was to my dad. A number of years ago I was dealing with the estate of a spinster who died with no surviving relatives. In the First World War she had lost her fiancé and 2 brothers and she had never got over her loss. Hanging on her wall was a photograph of a soldier but there was no note as to which one of the three is was. The photograph was due to be put in a skip so I took it home and hung it on my wall and it's still there. On Sunday we will remember him even if I still don't know who he is.

John, Epsom

My Grandmother lost her first husband in 1917. She was left with 6 children. She remarried in 1919 to a man with 6 children also. Unfortunately my Grandmothers boys had to be placed into Barnardo's as she got no pension for them and my Grandfather started to beat them. They were eventually emigrated to Canada and only one has been traced. I still feel sad that they suffered so much.

Sheila Robinson, York

My father was in the WWII he suffered mental scars after a parachute jump went wrong in Algeria where is was training to go out over Arnem. If he had done he wouldn't have survived as the Germans machined them as they came down. The accident left his nerves shot to pieces. The Doctors now call him a problem patient, they need to remember that the likes of men like my Dad are the reason why they have the lifestyle they have today.

ann, whitstable

Tears are rolling down my cheeks at the thought of a small child carried on his fathers shoulder and still clinging to that memory after all these years. So touching and sad to think of the terrible loss suffered by so many. Mr Overall will never forget, and after reading this story it will stay in my mind too.

Lucy Chaplin, Lichfield, England

The stories and the memories of both wars are still etched in the minds of most people in the UK over the age of 30. Even if we are too young to remember either war, we grew up hearing the stories and seeing films documentaries and lessons in school. And I still can't believe what our soldiers were conscripted to do! I am very glad that conscription is not necessary any longer but I fear that if a new war on these scales happens, we will have hundreds of thousands of British men and women forced back into that life. I just hope that they get more dignity and more funding than those poor souls of WWI.

Heather, Willenhall