11/11/1918-11/11/2018: 100 years since end of World War 1 Readers share their memories of loved ones who fought… and died
A tale of two brothers and the odds of life or death at the front
AS the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War nears, we are telling stories of ordinary people who made extraordinary sacrifices.
To share the experiences of a relative, email features@mirror.co.uk or write to WW1 Memories, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5AP. Please include a phone number. MOTHERS all over the country sent their sons off to war, not knowing if any would return. Brothers Albert and Harold Auerbach from Ealing, West London, both had the odds stacked against them when they enlisted to do their bit. In 1917 Harold joined the Royal Flying Corps and became a fighter pilot, a role with a life expectancy of just three weeks. Yet somehow he survived until the Armistice in November 1918, served with the RFC’s successor the Royal Air Force, and went on to
live until 1975. Elder brother Albert, a Royal Fusiliers second lieutenant, endured four years of warfare in Gallipoli and on the Western Front only to die with the end of the conflict in sight.
He was killed by a shell during the Second Battle of the Somme on September 1, 1918, and was posthumously awarded the Military Cross.
In one poignant letter home Albert, who was engaged, wrote: “Still it will all be over one day,
and what a day it will be, won’t it? It nearly makes us dotty to think of that day and so we carry on merrily and happily here.”
Harold’s daughter Patricia Aybrey, 63, also from Ealing, says: “I am so proud of them both. My father was so brave to sign up for such a dangerous role, maybe he thought he would be the one not to come home – but it was Albert.”