Walter Lockey

"He never talked about the war - like most of the WWI veterans, he kept it all to himself, so we can’t imagine what he had been through or what he saw. It must never have left him though as during the days before he died, he believed he was back in the trenches.

He was born on 6 February 1896, and died on 18 February 1983. He was married to Hannah on 17 February 1920, and had 4 children - Walter (my father), Joan, Norman and Margaret.

My grandfather was in the Territorial Army before the war, and during the war he served in the 7th Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers. He fought in Ypres, the Somme and Passchendaele.

He worked all his life as a compositor in the printing department at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle newspaper.

I’m currently reading a book called A Sturdy Race of Men about the Northumberland Fusiliers during WWI, and was surprised to see a photo of my grandfather as part of the football team called the Alnwick and Alndale Juniors 1913-4 (page 23). It shows which of the players died in the war and which ones survived.

I used to talk to my grandfather about lots of things, but he never ever talked about the war, and I think that is how he coped with his memories."

Walter Young Lockey was brother to Thomas Knox Lockey