Laura Spark

Thats wonderful! Its amazing to know it saw troops through battles! gives me the shivers! And the writing on the bellows!

It is a 48 button English, concert pitch, 4 bellow folds. Serial number - 55556 (I think!)

Thank you, thats very interesting! I searched again and There is an F Brent with the last three digits 429 - But he was in the RAF in 1941 - could he have been in both wars? I found a site about service numbers in WW1 generally being a bit all over the place with duplicates and different formations.

Hi all! I just wanted to share with you this wonderful piece of history I found when I opened up this Lachenal I bought recently. I bought from an antiques seller on ebay that didn't specialise in instruments so they couldn't vouch for the state of the instrument, so it was a bit of a gamble, but it paid off, the concertina is in really good condition, and when I opened it to try to fix a few reeds, I found this! I believe it reads - This concertina was purchased from Serg Clayton *** By Corp F Brent *** At Auchy au Bois (maybe says France?) Dec 11th 1915 Rec’d by Serg Clayton in (France?) La F***, Aug 1915 Rec'd means 'received'. How did Serg. Clayton acquire it? Did Corp Brent play it in the trenches over Christmas 1915? The Christmas Truce of 1914? Did either of these man make it home? I've tried to do a quick search in the army records but I cant find an F Brent with a service number that could match and there are a lot of Claytons too...