Bert Manning

Herbert Manning - or Bert as he signed himself on a postcard home - is Jenny's paternal grandfather.  He was born into a farming family in South Devon in 1881. As a young man he trained to become a draper in Bristol, where he met Jenny's grandmother. They married  in 1909 and together set up a draper's shop in Topsham, Devon, going on to have two sons, Arthur and David, Jenny's father. After the outbreak of World War One, Bert was sent to France in 1917 and died east of Amiens in 1918, of a shrapnel wound to the head .