War Memorials – WW1 Remembrance Diary

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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

(This well-known verse is from Lawrence Binyon’s September 1914 poem “For the Fallen“, the full text of which is at the end of this article.)

Index

Introduction
Epsom & Ewell WW1 Remembrance Diary
“And some there be which have no memorial”
For the Fallen

Introduction

The Remembrance Diary below lists – in date order of their death – all those Great War casualties commemorated on memorials in Epsom and Ewell.

Following increasing tension in central Europe, the war began on 28 July 1914 with the Austro-Hungarian shelling of the Serbian capital of Belgrade. Things quickly escalated, and the UK entered the war on 4 August 1914 on the expiration of its ultimatum to Germany.

The conflict came to be contemporaneously described as “the war to end all wars” (as WW2 showed, a forlorn hope). It led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans. An estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a direct result of the war.

The first British casualty of the war is held to be 51 year old civilian Henry Hadley who died on 5 August 1914, having been fatally shot in Germany, allegedly while resisting arrest, on 3 August – the day before the UK’s ultimatum expired. The first soldier of the British Empire to fall in action was 17 year old John Henry Parr from Finchley. The first casualty from Epsom & Ewell was 21 year old Arthur Walliker, killed in action on 23 August.

The last serviceman from Epsom & Ewell to be killed in action was 21 year old Kenneth Watkins, on 1 November 1918. (The very last British soldier to be killed in action was 40 year old George Ellison, from York, shot by a German sniper at Mons at 9.30am on 11 November 1918, just 90 minutes before the Armistice came into effect.)

However, many WW1 deaths were not “in action”. In addition to those resulting from wounds received in battle, there were deaths in accidents, a number of suicides, and deaths from illness and disease. Much of the illness and disease was related to individuals’ military service (perhaps particularly in the Middle East) but, from January 1918, the Spanish ‘flu pandemic also took a significant toll.

The last Epsom & Ewell casualty recorded below is 38 year old Alfred Foulger, who died in November 1921. (We do not have the exact date of death, but it will have been only a few days before his burial in Epsom Cemetery on 26 November.) Alfred had seen service in Egypt and Palestine from 1916 to January 1918 when he was discharged as now being physically unfit – it appears as a result of injuries or illness during his time in the Middle East – and this doubtless contributed to his early death.

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Epsom & Ewell WW1 Remembrance Diary

Clicking on a surname will lead to the information about the individual casualty.

(Sadly, the diary ends with the names of seven servicemen who obviously had sufficient connection to the area to merit commemoration on a local memorial, but whose identity has – in spite of extensive research – yet to be established. If you can help identify any of those individuals, please let us know.)

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“And some there be which have no memorial”

This evocative verse (from Ecclesiasticus 44:9) does not refer to servicemen who have no known grave: the Imperial War Graves Commission (since the 1950s, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission) was meticulous in recording all deaths and took great care to commemorate those whose bodies were never found on memorials such as those at Thiepval and the Menin Gate – or, in the case of Naval personnel on memorials such as those at Chatham, Portsmouth and (for Merchant Seamen) Tower Hill.

As noted above, the last name in our Remembrance Diary is Alfred Foulger who died in November 1921. This was nearly five months after the Imperial War Graves Commission’s cut-off date on 31 August 1921. Alfred’s name (along with two of his five brothers) appears on Epsom’s Ashley Road WW1 Memorial only because the then Urban District Council took so long in deciding what the memorial should be: the final unveiling was in 1923. (His name is not with his brothers’ on Christ Church’s WW1 memorial as that was completed in early 1921.)

No, those “which have no memorial” are the untold number who, while they survived beyond the cut-off date of 31 August 1921, nevertheless died prematurely – and perhaps after years of physical and mental incapacity – as a direct consequence of their service during WW1.

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For the Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
(Published in The Times newspaper on 21st September 1914).

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