When you go digging, the detail you can find is astonishing. Like I said before, my cousin researched our family tree on the maternal side.
We all knew Grandad lost an arm and a leg in France in WW1. We knew through the ones who were born early enough to know him before he died, that he'd been holding a horse for an officer, when a copy of "Tit Bits" (a weekly mag that lasted until the 80s, and no, nothing to do with glamour models!) fluttered past and he leaned down to pick it up. As he did, a shell came over and blew the horse and everyone on their feet, away.
Now, with copies of his Army medical papers, we found that he lay in the mud, presumed dead for THREE DAYS, in freezing conditions, (while the battle carried on) before being picked up for burial, but a slight movement was noticed. His papers describe a bayonet wound to his neck too. We don't know if a mate or a German tried to finish him off out of mercy.
The cold is what must have saved him from bleeding to death. He was a very brave man. This was 1916 and my mum and her twin were born in 1919, so he was back to full function! There were eight other kids to support and another one after my mum, making eleven in all, so he worked selling papers etc in a kiosk opposite the Adelphi hotel. I've got a picture of that. What a man.
As an aside, he lost his mum as a little boy and his dad remarried, but he didn't like the step-mum, so he stowed away on a ship going from Liverpool to Rio de Janero. He got discovered and when they docked, got sent back to Liverpool. Amazing to think if he'd got away with it I wouldn't be here!