While sorting through a box of old family photographs, I came across some photos of my paternal grandfather, Giovanni Junior. We called him "Big John" because he was a big man with a big Roman nose. He married my grandmother, Ethel Dennis in London in 1912. He was an automobile salesman and mechanic. He volunteered for the British Army Signals Core on the outbreak of the Great War and saw action at the battle of the Somme and at Ypres. Photographs show him as an ambulance or lorry driver. Because he was an automobile electrician and mechanic and because the army were replacing horse-drawn transport with motor transport, he was seconded to the transport corps as there was a shortage of men who knew how to drive a motor ambulance, or who could repair one in the field. According to my great-grandmother, towards the end of the war at the Somme he was “blown up” in a big explosion and landed in a river of mud. The mud saved his life. He was then pensioned by the Army and repatriated back to London.
With his army pension money Giovanni Jr (John) and his wife Ethel (nee’ Dennis) and their two children joined his brother Lucio in South Africa in 1922. Lucio purchased a large farm north of Johannesburg which was called Craighall. A third child, Julia (Julie) was born soon after.
I have his war medals and his fob-watch. Here are the photos I found.
Giovanni Serretta London 1914
Giovanni (in driver's seat) and colleagues with their ambulance in Dover en-route to calais in 1916
Giovanni (on left) with his crew and their Wolseley ambulance at Calais in 1916
L-R: My father Denis, Giovanni (Big John), Julia (seated on log) Ethel (my grandmother) and Ginny at Craighall, 1927.
Big John (Giovanni Jr) 1976
