Recorded to commemorate 100th anniversary of the WWI Armistice, 11th November 2018.
Download free sheet music in public domain:
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Go to “Arrangements and Transcriptions” tab, scroll down to “For Piano (Grainger)"
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In WW2 my father, Leslie Barton from Liverpool, was a Captain in the King's Own Royal Regiment.
In my teens we lived alone together. Occasionally he told me about his experiences during the war. He shared wonderful stories of comradeship between soldiers as well as harrowing accounts of battlefield.
He told me about his wounding on the beaches of France during the Normandy Landing. A bomb exploded close to him, his batman was killed instantly and a piece of burning shrapnel made a huge hole in his side. He said he remembered looking down from a distance above at his wounded body laying on the ground by a tree. He said the memory of that experience changed his life.
It took two years in hospital for my father to recover enough to walk again. During his convalescence he taught the other recovering soldiers in hospital, electricity.
The surgeon left a piece of shrapnel close to my father’s spine which he said was too difficult to remove with the risk of being paralyzed. This shrapnel caused my father pain walking the rest of his life, but he never complained about it to anyone - ever. When I was young he played football with me like all fathers do. It wasn’t until I was older I understood how painful that must have been for him to do.
In my early 20’s I took my father to France and we spent the day looking across the peaceful beaches of Normandy together.
My father died of cancer in 2000. He choose the simple wooden cross of a soldier for his memorial as he said he felt in his heart he was a soldier until his last.
If he had been alive today we would have laid a wreath at the town's War Memorial, as he did every single year at Armistice.
My Father loved Elgar's music, especially "Nimrod" and "Pomp and Circumstance March No.1".
This is for you, dad.