UNDYING MEMORY


A site to assist you to find more about those named on the war memorials of much West Suffolk and East Cambridgeshire, and some whose names were missed.

SEARCH by TOWN or VILLAGE ..... or SEARCH by SURNAME

or click on your chosen area
NEWMARKET AREA...
HAVERHILL AREA...
BURY ST.EDMUNDS BOROUGH.....
BURY area to North and West (Breckland)...
BURY area to South and East...



Problem..Men not properly identified..HELP NEEDED Click here

A relative named on this website ? and need their birth/death or marriage certificate
please contact webmaster@undyingmemory.net.
I have many and may just have what you want, costs nothing to ask and copies sent FREE.


My inspiration for this project, and my dedication, is to my maternal Grandfather Sidney Howard Welch, MC and bar. He it was that once said, to a customer in our pub who had queried the inconvenience of respecting the 2 minutes silence at 11 am on 11th November, that "It was not convenient for so many of my chums to die when they did". Grandpa enlisted a month short of his 16th birthday, one of many who lied to get in the Army and escape the drudgery of civilian life. That was in March 1909. As a Regular in the Royal Field Artillery he was quickly in France when war broke out. Commissioned, he survived the war and even stayed on in France until 1921 as one of the officers in charge of parties clearing the battle fields, exhuming the bodies and helping to "populate" the newer, larger cemeteries, in his instance, Faubourg d'Amiens in Arras. He seldom spoke of his war experiences, especially the latter years. Having embarked on this project I do regret not asking more of him, but perhaps it was best not to have re-awakened his memories of such horrific experiences. One thing he did instil in me though was that we must never, ever forget the sacrifices our Servicemen made for us


Please note that this site an ongoing project. It will always rely on relatives and interested parties to let us know of any errors and hopefully to supply additional information. In many cases it is necessary, due to sparse documentary evidence, to make assumptions as to the identity of the casualty. This is usually influenced by only one name or other data from an official source matching with other sources. Hopefully I have indicated where these individuals are "assumed to be", "believed to be" or "possibly".
Every year more historical information is placed on line which can more positively identify our casualties. Already it seems I must go through the whole exercise again as the additions to Ancestry and the 1939 Register on Find my Past means more information is available to confirm identities or to add the data already assembled. It will be a bit like painting the Forth Bridge.

You may find more details if you check again later


BIRTH - MARRIAGE - DEATH CERTIFICATES

I have a great number of these. Should your man be named on this website and you would like a certificate, please ask me, just in case I do have what you need. Obviously I have only a tiny percentage of the total here, but it costs nothing to ask



The Canadian Government having completed digitising all their WW1 C.E.F. service records, I need to trawl through 'my' men to see what else can be found. It is like painting the Forth Bridge, and then the Western Front Association in partnership with Ancestry digitised over 6 million pension cards which have yielded even more details. These are actually on Fold 3 (subscription) but members of the Western Front Association can access free via the W.F.A. website. Already they have enabled me to find 4 of the previously unidentified and confirm the identity of several others. It will be along haul, but checking all of these out is the next venture. All mentions of pension cards are thanks to this project by the Western Front Association.
The release of the 1921 census will hopefully help identify more men, but that will have to wait until the charges to access each record are greatly reduced

Also learn about the medals most of these men were awarded

Abbreviations and glossary of terms

The concentration cards of the CWGC now on their website help to identify more closely where these men fell. Unfortunately for WW2 many references only give the Graves Registration report number and seemingly it was not felt appropriate to make these generally available to the public, some details therein being deemed to be possibly distressing. Where possible I have pin-pointed many of the details on satellite maps of the area today.
By means of a facility on the website of the Western Front Association it was possible to input the WW1 Army map reference to go to satellite views of the location. You do need to be a member but why not ?, it is well worth the money. This enables a better understanding of where a trench, or an action took place, or where a man was found or originally buried before being moved to his current resting place. A book "Rats Alley" by Peter Chasseaud is very useful for obtaining map references for trenches

I am in no position to guarantee every fact here is correct, but have endeavoured to check as much as possible. In the meantime please accept this work as a guide only.

Rather than the casualties of war being just names carved into stone, this site is an attempt to give some better realization of the men and women commemorated on the war memorials around Newmarket. The area covered is primarily every village or town where births, marriages and deaths were registered in Newmarket around 1900. That encompasses from Higham in the East to Lode in the West, and from Carlton in the South to Soham in the North.

Having been inveigled into researching Lakenheath, which led to Hockwold, Eriswell and Beck Row, things snowballed and before long the villages and towns comprising the Brecklands of Suffolk were also covered. I was then asked to add the Haverhill area since there is some overlap and a blurred border with Newmarket

If the borders have strayed it is usually due to my including all the parishes within a particular benefice. I have just added the Borough of Bury St.Edmunds, and the village between Bury and Haverhill and some east of the town. If your village memorial has already been researched, please let me know so I may seek appropriate permissions to exapnd the details here if possible

I claim no originality for this work, it is simply a compilation of data culled from a multitude of sources, mainly on line, to attempt to illustrate these men and women and their family ties. The summaries of what was happening at the time of their death is a feeble attempt to help readers envisage the conditions prevailing then, and where it was happening. Such is the power of the internet and the upsurge in interest in this subject that hardly a month passes without some new source of information becoming available. It seems that I could start all over again and vastly increase the contents of this website.

I have now covered close to 4,300 souls, on over 150 memorials. Mostly these are the traditional monuments on a corner of the village green, or at the crossroads, or in the church. Since no criteria for inclusion on a memorial has been found for any of them, also here are some names who seem to be every bit as worthy of inclusion on a particular memorial as the others, but for some reason, never had their name engraved there. Some are named on more than one memorial, better that than be forgotten entirely.

DOLORES CROSS


You may have seen an unusual style of poppy and cross on some of the graves, such as above. These are the Dolores Crosses from New Zealand.
The aim of the Project is ambitious and very personal. There are approximately 30,000 New Zealand military personnel buried on foreign soil.The primary aim of the Project is to personally pay tribute to each of these men with a Dolores Cross. To document that a tribute has been made to a particular gravesite, photographs of the gravestones with the Dolores Cross placed will be taken where possible. However, the project is not focused on being a photographic project and does not collect personal photographs of military personnel.

The headstone above is in Honington Churchyard and the airman, although a Kiwi, was serving in the Royal Air Force, not the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

The Dolores Cross is a simple, hand-made, weaved Harakeke (New Zealand flax) cross. The weave design was created through trial and error, and a little bit of creativity. Harakeke was chosen because it grows plentifully in New Zealand and it seemed appropriate that a part of New Zealand made up this unique tribute. It creates an intimate link between the homeland and those New Zealanders who went to fight in both World Wars and never returned. The name 'Dolores' is Latin for 'sorrows', and refers to the Virgin Mary, who is referred to as 'Maria de los Dolores' - 'Our Lady of Sorrows' or 'Mary of Sorrows'. As such, the name 'Dolores Cross' is a reference to its origins and its memorial purpose as it means "the cross of sorrows".

The Dolores Cross is the personal tribute of Dolores Ho, a Malaysian-Chinese who migrated to New Zealand in 1987. Currently the Archivist of the National Army Museum, New Zealand, Dolores has worked with military writings and archives as a librarian and archivist for the past 15 years. Through her work, Dolores has developed a deep passion for New Zealand military history and respect for the sacrifices made by ordinary New Zealanders who did extraordinary things in war time. In her spare time, Dolores devotes her energies to the Dolores Cross Project, gardening and baking, and spending time with her two daughters.

Tony Pringle has promised Dolores to place these crosses on the graves of the eight Royal New Zealand Air Force men in Newmarket cemetery, but not on Remembrance Day in November, but as requested by Dolores, on Anzac Day..25th April.


Acknowledgements
My sources are of course from the census, birth, marriage and death registrations, and many military archive sources which hopefully I have acknowledged as I went along.
Since going live with this website and having had three books published, I am frequently contacted by relatives with extra information and photographs, which hopefully I have acknowledged as I went along. Most rewarding has been the times I have reversed this and the relatives get to see a photograph they have not seen before
On-line forums such as www.rafcommands.com/forum    www.1914-1918.invisionzone.com    www.ww2talk.com and fellow members of such forums (too numerous for individual credit) have been invaluable. Every year organisations are adding to their on line resources, sites such as www.cwgc.org     www.Ancestry.co.uk and www.FindmyPast.co.uk    which means that this website can be continually up dated and expanded.
The satellite views used to locate burial places or trenches are from Google or The Western Front Association. Using the facility on the Western Front Association website ( you need to be a member, but why not?) you can feed in the Army map reference for a trench or such feature and you then get a map and an aerial view with that feature marked

Local newspapers were the source of many reports and letters; the Bury Free Press, Bury & Norwich Post, Cambridge Daily News, Cambridge Weekly News, Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, Ely Standard via several routes but mainly Find my Past. The staff of the Newmarket Journal have been extremely helpful and very kindly allowed me access to their archived copies.
Visits to The National Archives at Kew, or on line have been essential.
One warning though, where no actual certificates have been sourced, or the census not available, or no relatives came forward, the place of birth or marriage has often to be left as the registration district which issued the certificates. Hence for instance, if I have given Newmarket as the place, this could take in villages as far apart as Higham and Bottisham. Also parish and County boundaries have changed in many places. Registrations of birth, marriage and death indicate purely the quarter in which the registration took place, and the registration district. Hence a birth registered to Newmarket Q1-1892 could actually be anywhere from Higham to Lode, Soham to Carlton and any time from mid December 1891 to the end of March 1892.

I seek no copyright for any of this for myself - education should not be restricted - but please recognise the copyrights/credits of others where I have indicated credit.

If you have found this site useful, please remember to be generous next time you pass the Royal British Legion poppy seller, the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund or SSAFA (Soldiers,Sailors, Airmen and Families Association). They still look after those serving, and those who returned home but they, or their family, are in need.

Where I have acknowledged Tony Buckley and Asian War Graves Photo Group - http://www.asianwargraves.com
please note that copyright is held by them and these photograph shall never be sold.

I must also give thanks to my daughter Lene, and my friends and wheelchair pushers/headstone searchers, the late Tony Dunn, Rodney Gibson, Roy Beardsworth and Michael Pettitt who have all suffered from my hobby of "cemetery hopping". Indeed many of the headstone and cemetery photographs from the Somme and Ypres would have been impossible without their help, Rodney Gibson especially has pushed my chair miles, and taken thousands of photos for me. Adrian Pye has been extremely busy proof reading and getting me to sort out the many typos I seem to be forever making.Credit is due also to the many churchwardens, parishioners and relatives of the fallen, too many to name individually, who have assised me
I had better not forget kid sister Anne and brother in law Rex who have guided me in the arts of dark arts of genealogy

Should any one feel I have infringed their copyright in any way, please let me know so that it can be sorted out amicably. So much data and so many photographs are publicly available on the internet, it is difficult at times to be sure what can be used and what cannot.
Bear in mind please that this is a sincere attempt to educate the natives of our towns and village of who the men were, what their background was and what they went through in order to overcome tyranny on our behalf. There is absolutely no commercial interest whatsoever

I am always ready to receive corrections, new information and especially photographs, in order that this website can be as up to date as possible.

Please contact initially by emailing
webmaster@undyingmemory.net
Remembrance is not just two minutes silence every November

SEARCH by TOWN or VILLAGE ..... or SEARCH by SURNAME