Six sons of an English family went off to the trenches.
Five were killed.
The sixth was brought home by the personal intervention of Queen Mary, after the vicar’s wife wrote to her to tell her the story.
I never had children, so I can’t imagine the pain of losing one, much less five, children like that. I’m glad the surviving son had a decent life, with loving descendants.
In WWII there were the Sullivan brothers, five of them who served in the navy aboard the same ship and all were killed when it was sunk.
Very sad. This sort of thing has probably happened a lot in past wars though, we just don’t know about it.
Queen Mary was a fairly ‘strong’ character. I imagine that any request from her received a favourable response.
It’s the reason why there is special consideration now for that type of situation. I knew men in Vietnam whose brothers were exempt from serving in combat as long as they were there.
Saving Private Ryan was fiction but it was based on the Niland brothers. Three of the four brothers were presumed killed within a short time. Fritz Niland was removed from the battlefield because of it. He had been dropped as part of the 101st Airborne. Ambrose mentions it in Band of Brothers. One of the Niland brothers was later discovered to be alive and in a Japanese prison camp. He also survived the war.
Iirc finding Fritz Niland was not as dramatic as the movie. Word was sent out and he was found by a chaplain.
The Sullivan brothers were survived by a sister, Genevieve. She joined the WAVES, which was the women’s branch of the Navy. I strongly suspect that they were very careful of her.
And if you only had one child, and he died in the war, it’s your own fault for not having more.
Many such hideous situations for families, in the World Wars; this from a Briton whose family was unusually fortunate as regards survival – relatively unharmed – of family members in both conflicts. There comes to mind the sad story of the Souls family of Great Rissington, Gloucestershire, five of whose six sons went to, and were killed in, WWI. Son #6 was too young to fight; but he died of meningitis not long after the war.
That said – it’s tempting to muse about a possible “contrarian” work of fiction, based on a general situation of this kind; in which the last surviving brother is (unlike the Willie Smith of this thread, who was in it all, unwillingly) an ardent patriot, eager to be part of the fighting – and, as was the case with some thick-skinned guys, having a wonderful time in the war – and no respecter of authority (royalty, clergy, presidents, or whatever) entreating that he be rescued / saved. One imagines him furiously resisting attempts to pull him out and send him home, and stating in the strongest terms that he wants to stay in the fight, and take his chances together with his mates…
The Spanish Army has had that kind of considerations since at least the 1900s, for draftees, but you could still volunteer.