courtesy Imperial War Museums http://www.iwm.org.uk

This is my grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel George Leslie Torrens. I never met him, though I was in my teens by the time he died. He’d left the service under a cloud during the Second World War, after diverting tightly rationed resources – army vehicles and gasoline – to a family wedding. This was so scandalous that he and my grandmother parted and he was rarely spoken of. Growing up, I was given the impression, without ever being directly lied to, that he had died long before we were born from wounds received in “The War” (though which war was conveniently unspecified.)

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