Having been told to take things at a slightly steadier pace, I decided to do some more research for a few more of the men that are named on the Hartshorne War Memorial.
While I accept I’m not born in the village it has been my home for the last 23 years and that of my better half since the late 70’s, and I have firm sense of belonging to the place. So each remembrance Sunday when back in the UK I have taken great pride in representing the Royal British Legion in the village and laid a wreath at the village war memorial.
One of the interesting things is that a villager produced a document called “In memory of the Men of Hartshorne who fell in the Great War”.
I’ve been using this document to search for where each of the men are either buried or where they are commemorated. During my posting to Mons, I’m aiming to try and visit as many as I can of those that are in Belgium and in France.
This weekend has seen me look to locate those that are in the Somme area. This covers 4 of the men listed on the village war memorial, these are:
- Private James Blood, 10th Battalion Notts and Derby Regiment.
- Lance Sergeant Thomas King, 4th Battalion Grenadier Guards.
- Lance Corporal Sidney Walker, 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Regiment.
- Lance Corporal John Walton, 1st Battalion North Staffordshire Regiment.
Of these 4 men, 3 have no known grave and are commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial.
The first is James Blood.
He is located on Pier 10 of the memorial and face “C” of the pier. Each pier and face of the memorial is coded to help locate the names, the numbers are at the base of the pier. As shown below:
The memorial has the names of all of the fallen with no known grave listed by Regiments, so by looking for the Unit it is then a case of looking for the rank and then the names are listed alphabetically.
For those visitors who are not of a military background the Regiments appear across the memorial by Regimental precedence, not in alphabetical order.
The next one that I’ll deal with is LCpl John Walton of the 1st Bn North Staffordshire Regiment. His name is located on the 14th Pier/ Piller and on Face B. His name appear just above the pier marker.
L/Sgt Thomas King of the 4th Bn Grenadier Guards is slightly different from the other 2 soldiers, in the fact that his name is not listed with in the Grenadier Guards roll, he is located separately as an addendum, which indicates that he was added to the list of the missing after the main list had been completed and carved. His name is located on the outside of the memorial on Pier 4 face C.
The last Man of Hartshorne, LCpl Sidney Walker of 2nd Bn Royal Irish Regiment, that I visited today does have a grave and he is located at the Caterpiller Valley Cemetery, which is just outside the village of Longueval. He is located in section 11 of the Cemetery, row E and grave 21.
Its been an interesting day tracking down these 4 names and their memorials.
The aim is to get photos or visit as many of these villagers graves or memorials as I can during my time in Belgium. I’ve already done a visit to Ypres and got a few and also a visit to Arras recently picked up a few more. I plan to create a blog post for each group that I track down.