Quest to remember fallen

Vicar's wife Jenny Harrison has devoted a year of research to finding out about the men named on the war memorials of her husband's three parishes. NIGEL KERTON reports on the quest that has taken her to the former battlefields of France

JENNY Harrison was inspired to begin a mission of discovery that has led to the creation of a unique remembrance tribute by the haunting words of the Laurence Binyon poem We Remember.

She was taking part in last year's Remembrance Sunday service at Great Bedwyn when the poem, which has become the moving anthem to those who gave their lives in the service of their country, rang out:

"They shall not grow 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."

It was then that Mrs Harrison vowed to ensure that the war dead from her area were never forgotten.

She resolved to find out all she could about the 56 men whose names appear on war memorials in Great and Little Bedwyn churchyards as well as St Katharine's Church in Savernake, the three parishes where her husband Rodney serves as vicar.

Not only has she found out which services each of the men was in, in many cases she has made a pilgrimage to their graves or memorials for those whose bodies were never recovered from the battle field.

She has compiled a unique book for each of the three parishes so that for ever more people can read of these unsung heroes and say truthfully on Poppy Days in years to come that they do remember.

Mrs Harrison has been helped in her quest by her husband, who was a professional soldier before joining the priesthood and served for 28 years in the Royal Tank Regiment.

Rev Harrison has always had an interest in World War One history and his knowledge proved an enormous help to his wife's research.

Mrs Harrison first became interested in the 1914-18 war victims when her brother decided to find out more about one of their uncles who died while fighting overseas.

With the help of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, they found his grave in the Heilly Station Cemetery in France which they visited to pay their respects.

Heilly Station is one of hundreds of cemeteries dotted around the area where the great battles of the World War One took place, French villages and foreign fields whose names became household words in Britain: Somme, Verdun, Ypres, Flanders, Amiens and many others.

Those were days of little information, when even telephones were in their infancy and families knew little other than that their kinsmen had died or were missing in action, presumed dead.

Today information is available almost at the press of a computer key from sources like the Commonwealth War Graves Commission web site which Mrs Harrison said she found invaluable in her research.

She said: "You used to have to have to contact the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in Maidenhead, either by writing to them or visiting their offices. Now all you have to do is look up their internet site and much of the information is there."

Gradually she was able to build up a portfolio for each of the parishes with information from the commission about the soldiers, sailors and airmen who perished in World War One and Two.

Besides men who were in the armed forces, she found details of journalist Robert Byron, whose family lived in Savernake Forest.

He was a war correspondent on his way to the Middle East in 1941 when his ship was sunk off the north coast of Scotland.

Mrs Harrison persuaded her husband to take her to France for their holidays and they toured the Great War battlefields.

They visited the cemeteries where the names of men from the Bedwyns and from Savernake are recorded, occasionally on graves but all too often on memorial tablets which showed that although they had perished, their bodies were never found.

Mrs Harrison said she regrets she has not had the time or the resources to get to graves or memorials in other parts of the world where Bedwyn and Savernake men fell.

She plans to ask villagers taking holidays in parts of the world including Greece (Mesopotamia), Egypt, Malta and Turkey if they could help complete her mission.

Mrs Harrison said: "I would be happy if anyone going to these places could help me by visiting cemeteries and taking photographs."

However, one grave she knows it will be hard to reach to photograph is in Basra deep inside President Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Some of the stories she has unearthed during her research have been very touching, like the three Great Bedwyn men Leonard Hart, George Stagg and Frank Edwards who all perished in the Great War. The first two fell on September 25 1915 and Mr Edwards died one month later.

Their consecutive Army numbers showed that in all probability they were friends who joined up together in the 6th Battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment, probably at the recruiting centre in Devizes.

Appropriately, perhaps, the names of all three are on the same memorial in the Loos cemetery in France.

The results of Mrs Harrison's research have been compiled into three books, which will be made available at the three parish churches for parishioners to look through this year.

Anyone wanting to look up details of servicemen and women killed in action whose graves or memorials are maintained by the Commonwealth War Graces Commission can find more information from its website: cwgc.org