One bit of family lore that I've been trying to track down for some years is whether or not my grandfather's younger brother Louis served in the British Army during World War II. A very curious matter, given that his father (my great-grandfather) was sentenced to death by the British during the Irish Civil War, and was incarcerated in an internment camp, and his eldest brother was at that point a general in the *Irish* Army.

My father tossed this bit of lore at me one lunchtime when he saw me with my nose in a book about Montgomery, and my surviving uncle says he has memories of Louis Costello telling stories about the "Western Desert" to my father and the older brothers.

Just today, I got word from the UK Ministry of Defence that they have a file on grand-uncle Louis. They're reviewing it to see if it can be released to me. It's been 115 years (as of a few months ago) since he was born, so I'm hopeful that it will be released to me.

Amusingly, to me, is the fact that the WO file category indicates that Louis was an enlisted man. A squaddie, to use the British Army term. Which means that my grand-uncle could have been quite a bit close to my fictional creation Westersloe Winterbough V.