Sam says: “The image of that little man, cut adrift in that vast, misty landscape, stayed with me.”Īgainst all the odds, he survived this new ordeal and was transferred to a prisoner of war camp hospital in Cologne. His grandad told him: “You’re going to tell stories. When Sam was 12 Alfred gave him a hand-written “contract” in which the boy promised to write his first novel by the age of 18. Sam’s grandad won the Military Medal for helping to rescue comrades from no man’s land.īecause he was small and a hard target for snipers, he also volunteered to carry messages. He had been shot while being carried, but Alfred was the target. His tales included how a soldier carried on running after his head had been blown clean off.Īnother time he carried an injured soldier back to the trenches, where he was found to be dead. Sam then began to pester his grandad to tell his war stories.Īnd after 50 years of silence, Alfred suddenly began to talk. Then one day his dad told him: “It’s because he remembers the mud in the trenches and never being able to get clean.”
Now Sam has shared his memories of his grandad, who died in 1991, such as how for the rest of his life he constantly washed his hands, a habit that young Sam laughed at. He had told his young grandson horrific tales of his time as a messenger in the trenches in World War One. LIKE Dean-Charles, director Sir Sam Mendes had his own family inspiration for his war film 1917 – his grandad Alfred. In the film - out this Friday - Dean-Charles and George MacKay play two lance corporals who must race across rat-infested, corpse-strewn no man’s land, braving bombs and water-filled craters to deliver a message that will save the lives of 1,600 British soldiers.
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So, with the help of World War One historian Jon Cooksey, whose expertise has been used by TV’s Who Do You Think You Are?, The Sun has exclusively pieced together the incredible story of the hero whose great, great grandson became one of the stars of the best war movie since Saving Private Ryan. “It was only after I spoke to my mum and dad, who then spoke to their parents, that it became clear that my great, great grandad had an entry in it.”īecause of filming commitments, Dean-Charles, who shot to fame in 2014 as young king Tommen Baratheon in Game Of Thrones, has not had time to investigate properly his ancestor’s remarkable wartime ordeal in the Battle of Loos.
10 The actor, best known for playing Tommen Baratheon in Game of Thrones, discovered that Private David Peers was his great, great grandfather Credit: Splash News
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