Chalford War Memorial

[HeatherC]

Yes Simon it is one of ours. This is the guy we think is on the memorial twice, once as DOWDING and once as FOWDEN, though his army records say DOWDEN. The details in the auction descritpion are pretty much correct. Don't think we'll be buying it though.

[HeatherC]

I hadn't realised it was so long since I posted on this thread and wanted to give a quick update on a few things.

Firstly we have found out a lot more about Frederick Gardiner, Grenadier Guards. There were some PoW records for him in the ICRC archive and his family did get his service record from the Guards Museum and also found and ordered his death certificate. It seems he actually died in 2nd Northern General Hospital in Leeds from pneumonia in February 1920. We know that his fiancee's brother was taking her to see him regularly which must have been awful for her with him still so far away from home all this time after the war (she was in Gloucestershire) after all the time they'd already spent apart. I've not seen the service record but apparently it and the death cert indicate he was still serving so he will be going forward to CWGC for recognition we hope (the family members are dealing with this)

Secondly we have found the RMLI service records for Charles Weaver, one of our mystery men. I was sure I looked for them before, but maybe the TNA indexing has changed since last I looked back in the summer! Anyway he seems to have joined RMLI aged 18 in 1886, left at the end of his limited engagement in 1899 and then rejoined the same year. This would make him 46 when war broke out and of course he may have then not gone overseas and died in the UK and gone unrecognised by CWGC or something like that. I can see we'll have to get the service records to find out!

The other mystery men remain a mystery but we haven't given up yet. After all we have another 4 years.

One other great bit of news was that Sidney Halliday who is on our memorial was identified in early November as one of the Canadian soldiers found in Amiens in 2006 - this thread refers to the story http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=219940 I was especially pleased as Sidney was my Great great grandmother's nephew (goodness knows what relation that makes him to me!) and I had known his history for some time so to find him after all these years is amazing.

[Simon_Fielding]

What a brilliant update Heather! Great project.

[HeatherC]

Thanks Simon, you've been a huge help to us with all the information you have uncovered on our mystery men and we won't give up on them.

We've been surprised and pleased at the local interest this has continued to generate and we are still getting people contacting us with photos, diaries, letters and other information. We've also started to widen the remit and look at the men from the area who served and came back, the women from the area who were involved in war work in any way and also at general life in the villages during the war. All much harder than researching those who died, but also incredibly rewarding to find stuff (often stored away in boxes and drawers) that has not seen the light of day for the best part of 100 years.

Monthly "what happend this month 100 years ago" articles in the local parish magazines also continue to generate interest and of course we still have many more of those to do since it now seems our last man died not in Nov 1919 as we had thought, but February 1920!

[elewis]

Heather,

slightly off topic but this idea might help you.

I see that you commented about how the £3.30 for the copies of the War Diaries started to mount up if you got then from the national archives.

These War Diaries are now all on the Naval and Military Archive http://www.nmarchive.com/ a full years subscription is £49.95, but you can take out a 30 day subscription for just £9.95 - so if you wait until you need 3 war diaries this is already the same as the national archives, so any others become "free" compared with the NA.

There is a fair bit of other stuff on there that might help regarding individual soldiers as well.

Just a thought that might help you complete your research and save a few quid.

Evan

PS: Before anybody nit picks about my maths I know that £3.30 x 3 = £9.90 but lets not argue about 5p

[HeatherC]

Thanks Evan

One of the nice things about being in a small group that does this is that we each have our area of expertise and indeed acess to different things. Two of our group are reasonably regular visitors to Kew (one is going next week in fact) and we tend to save up the things we need to look at until they visit. We have already looked up a fair few War Diaries like this and a load more will be done next week. Thanks for the suggestion though and we will keep it in mind.

Heather

[Simon_Fielding]

Just been looking at a 2/7th Worcs officer who transferred to the RFC -

Richard Spencer Lucy

Born Calcutta, Bengal 24^th October 1893 son of Arthur and Nora

In 1911 an apprentice mechanic at an Aston boarding house

1456 2nd Lieut. Richard Spencer Lucy (2/7 Worcestershire Regt.), (Maurice Farman Biplane, Military School, Birmingham). July 21st, 1915. Flight 556 30 07 15

Major attached RAF 5/6/19 gazetted Air Force Cross

Western Front 2^nd November 1915

12^th Sqdn RFC 2/Lt

43 Sqdn RAF acting Major

seems to have married Cumings' cousin Hermione Dulce Etta Cuming...still no Chalford link though!

[HeatherC]

Thanks Simon. We've not uncovered any more real detail about our remaining mystery men but we are still plugging away at it from time to time. We are now (as a Group) writing "the book" to tell the story of the parish at war and in the course of that we're finding out all sorts of tiiny snippets about our "156 men" (which is the number of names on the memorial and was our original working title for their story)

We're going to have another exhibition over Remembrance weekend this year. This time it will be in Bussage, one of the villages that makes up the civil parish of Chalford, in the hope that we attract a different audience and maybe find out more about the elusive missing few, especially as one of them - Charles Saunders - is remembered on the Bussage Church memorial. I still live in hope that by 2020 (centenary of the death of our last man) I will be able to post details of them all!

[HeatherC]

Looking back through the forum I realised I had not updated this since we published our book on the Chalford Parish during WW1.  After a lot of effort by our small team it went on sale locally around Easter time and recently we presented a cheque for £1000 to Help for Heroes from the proceeds.  Link to article here  In the end we could not totally solve the mystery of all our unknown men and had to put in a "missing but still not forgotten" section, describing what we knew about them.

 

Just wanted to say thank you very much to all those who helped out on details that we used in the book.  People here were a great source of help.

[Simon_Fielding]

Are there any copies still available Heather? 

[HeatherC]

Hi Simon

 

This was not meant to be a "please buy my book" post but yes we still have copies available.  It's been quite funny actually.  None of us had the faintest clue how many we'd sell so we decided to settle on 200 copies as our first run (we had to pay for them to be printed of course).  Well they shot off the shelves, with the local Eastcombe Stores & PO not only agreeing to stock them and take no cut of the profit but actively pushing them for us and definitely being our top sales outlet.  One of the authors works at one of the local pubs sometimes and has been selling them over the bar!  We've now had 4 small reprint runs and have even sent a box full to Canada.

 

If you are ever in the local area, Eastcombe Stores still has some.  However if this isn't somewhere you are passing routinely (and I'd hate you to make a special trip and then find they have sold out) then drop me a PM with your details and I will arrange to send you one.