The story of the Wilson family siblings from Penicuik, Scotland

Willie was enlisted and initially stationed in Northern Ireland before being sent to Normandy after the D-Day landings in June 1944. He was injured there by a shell that exploded beside a line of men he was standing in. Willie was standing in the line furthest from where the shell exploded and was the only one to survive; all the rest were killed. He never spoke of this, but he told his sister Helen in later life. It was a miracle he survived. Willie was sent back home to be patched up but was wounded a second time in April 1945. Willie was in the vicinity of the Rhine when he came under machine gun fire. Diving into a ditch, he cut his hand on a rusty wire, and his hand became badly infected. He returned home to Penicuik after the war, where he worked as a joiner. He was awarded four service medals.

Chris and Helen, Willie's sisters, were very close. They joined the ATS and were attached to the Royal Artillery. They likely trained at Newbattle Abbey. Helen was demobbed on compassionate grounds. It appears that her mother found it too much to have all her children serving. Her mother had lost her own mother and sister to the Spanish Flu, and a brother had been a prisoner of war during WW1. Helen did not receive her war medal until 1970. There's no indication why this was delayed. Was it the case that women were suddenly awarded medals?

All three siblings returned home from the war and lived together in Penicuik. Helen did the accounts for the family joinery business, and Chris worked as a cashier at one of the Penicuik paper mills. Helen taught Susan how to crochet as a child.

None of the siblings married or had family. Susan believed that their mother's distress influenced their decision not to marry. Susan's father, Harry May, was the Wilsons' first cousin. Helen told the story of Willie's war service to Harry after Willie died. Susan wanted the Wilson siblings' story to be recorded as they have no living descendants, and otherwise, they would be forgotten.