Tuesday May 22 2012
History Archive
Village History
The village men who never came back
Posted on October 20 2009 at 2:01:01 0 comments
Anne Humphries recalls the sacrifices of six sons of Alvechurch more than 90 years ago.
This year has seen the deaths of the last three World War One survivors in the UK: Bill Stone died on January 10 aged 108, Henry Allingham, July 18, aged 113 and Harry Patch, July 25, aged 111.
A service will be held in Westminster Abbey at 11am on 11 November to commemorate them and all who fought in World War One, so it is perhaps fitting to look at some of the Alvechurch servicemen who, like Stone, Allingham and Patch, left their homes and England to fight in foreign lands for King and country but who did not return.
The St Laurence church war memorial lists 36 men who died in World War One, 22 of these are also on the Alvechurch school memorial now housed in the Historical Society Museum and many more with Alvechurch links fought and died across the world.
While most are buried in the war cemeteries of France and Flanders, others are in Palestine, Gallipoli and Thessalonika. Many have no known grave and are simply listed on the huge memorials in France and Belgium including Thiepval, Tyne Cot, Arras and the Menin Gate.
St Laurence churchyard has seven Commonwealth War graves, three of them from World War One. One of these belongs to Roland Matthews, who was born in Alvechurch and left England to join his brother in a better life in Australia.
He could never have envisaged that war would come, that he would enlist in the Australian Imperial Force, fight in France and Belgium, be injured, die in a military hospital in Whitstable, Kent, and be buried near the tower of his home churchyard.
His name is listed on the bronze war memorial plaque in St Michael and All Angels, Cofton Hackett, where his parents lived, rather than the Alvechurch memorial.
Albert and Marcus Byng, brothers from Greenfield Cottages, Alvechurch, both enlisted and served in France.
Albert died on September 24 1917 and was buried at Longuenesse Cemetery. Marcus was a despatch rider with a special company of the Royal Engineers and survived the war only to die in France of broncho-pneumonia on March 9 1919. He is buried in the same cemetery as his brother.
A moving letter from his commanding officer on learning of his death some time later says: “Byng was a boy who took a very real solid pride in his allotted duties, risky though they were.”
The Rector of Alvechurch, Bishop Louis Mylne, must often have spoken of the war and commemorated those from Alvechurch who had died; by the time the war ended he had lost two of his own sons who had both enlisted in Irish regiments.
Edward Graham Mylne was born in Bombay when his father was Bishop there. He was mentioned in despatches but was wounded in May 1915. Bishop Mylne and his wife visited him in hospital in Rouen where he was recovering from a bullet wound to the lungs but he developed pneumonia and died.
His younger brother Euan Louis was posthumously awarded the Military Cross for his actions in an attack in which he was severely wounded.
The Bromsgrove Messenger gave a poignant account of a wounded soldier “dragging himself back to the British lines the next day spending time by the side of his gallant young officer’s body”.
Two other sons who served, one in the Army and one in the Navy, both survived.
After the war the playing fields at the Meadows were given “for the use of the children of Alvechurch” by Walter and Edith Wiggin in memory of their son George who was killed in Sinai on 24 April 1916.
The war memorial in the church was erected by Alfred and Margaret Wiggin, of Bordesley Hall, in thanks for the safe return of their son William Henry.
The names of all the Alvechurch men recorded on it are read every year at the service on Remembrance Sunday and in this way their sacrifice will never be forgotten.
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