Dad had Somme story to tell...

AN Oldham gunner whose wounds led him to his wife has had his tale retold for the 100th anniversary of the First World War.

Edmund Taylor, of the Machine Gun Corps, was sent to serve on the front line on the Somme, France.

His daughter Mary Lawton, from Lees, explained how in November, 1915, he had enlisted for the Black Watch in Manchester — a training battalion — and from his station in Scotland, was sent off to battle.

Months later he was shot and sent home to recover, only to be flown back again and injured for a second time.

Mary said: “The first time he was wounded, he was sent to a military hospital in Leek.

“While recovering he met his future wife (my mum) Elsie Whalley, who worked in a greengrocer’s. She used to give him oranges all the time because she thought he looked so thin!”

As soon as Edmund recovered, he was sent back to the Somme, where a second injury left him deaf.

While he was there, he found out his mother had died in Oldham, so decided to go back to Leek in Staffordshire to find his sweetheart and they married just four days later.

Sweetheart

After his second recovery, he spent the rest of the war in the 6th Battalion Attack Co in Grantham, where he and Elsie both worked as cooks.
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