Although known as Peter or Our Pete father was actually christened Verdun Cecil. He was named Verdun after the battle in France that was raging in that year, 1916, from February to December, the longest battle of the first world war. He was born in Gloucester, the third child of George and Sarah, his elder 2 siblings being ALBERT and VIOLET. The family moved to Stroud where they lived in a lane off Slad Road a short distance from where local author Laurie Lee lived. Here the children played on the banks of the river Frome running past the bottom of the garden of the house and the reservoir in Libby's drive. In 1921 at the age of 5 he started at Uplands Infant School. In the late 20's the family moved again, this time to Ryeford near the mill, again on the banks of the Frome. It was at this house in Ryeford that his sisters, MELDA, BRENDA and FREDA were born. His father was employed as a lorry driver at the local cloth mill of Marling and Evans and in 1928 after leaving school at the age of 14 he went to work there along with his father, brother Albert and sister Violet. After saving some money, in 1934 father bought an old Jowett motor car for £10 and started to teach himself to drive. A driving test was not required in those days. At this time his father was working for the Black and White Coach Company and one day he drove my father to Cheltenham in the Jowett, where he had to collect a coach. Getting into the coach, he told father to make his own way home, which he did. And that was how father learnt to drive, by trial and error, on the journey back from Cheltenham to Ryeford. Prospects were poor at the mill and so father decided to join the Air Force. However his parents were horrified at this and when the papers came through telling him to report to Bristol they destroyed them. Undeterred he tried again and on July 14th 1937 he signed on for 12 years as a motor transport driver. When the war started everyone’s life was changed and in 1941 he was sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force. He was in France until after the evacuation of Dunkirk and returned to England on the Railway Company Ferry landing at Plymouth. His next posting was at the Nr.1 Balloon Site at Kidbrook, south east London from where gas was supplied to Barrage Balloon sites during the bombing of the capital and also Dover. The supply depot at Greenwich was bombed and so he had to travel to Runcorn in Cheshire to collect the gas. The journey took 6 to 7 days to complete, driving a Crossley six wheel three ton truck towing two gas trailers with an overall length of 62 feet at a top speed of 12 mile per hour. After the Battle of Britain he served around the Middle East in Iraq, Palestine and the Western Desert where many other adventures occurred. Writing to Joyce whom he was to marry he used his service identification 542210 Cpl. Tritton V.C. which impressed all who saw the letters, as they thought the V.C. stood for Victoria Cross. He married Joyce Townsend in 1945 and after the war lived in a small terraced cottage in Parliament Street, Stroud where I was born in 1947. Father was by now working for Newman Hender in Woodchester. Although I was an only child, I was not alone as so many of our extended family, the Durns, Gardiners and Watherns all lived within a short distance. In 1962 we moved to Spider Lane where my mother died seven months after my marriage to Pat in 1976. Father remarried 4 years later in this very church and moved to Stonehouse. Despite not being physically active towards the end of his life his brain remained as sharp as ever and he would often recall events of his early life as we talked. He will be sadly missed.