Remember
On 22nd of May 1921 the Tavistock war memorial was unveiled and dedicated.
On the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 an Armistice was signed at Compiègne, France, dictating cessation of hostilities between the allies and Germany. The armistice came into force at 11am on that historic day to end a war which had killed some 18 million people, military and civilian, and wounded some 23 million more. Three years later, on the 22nd of May 1921, Tavistock unveiled and dedicated a granite war memorial in Guildhall Square commemorating, on that special day, 101 of Tavistock’s sons who fell in that terrible conflict. By the date of closure for names, November 1923, a further 18 names had been added, and, in 2005, a further name, that of Frederick Dashper. The first Tavistock related death during the war was that of Hugh-Mockler Ferryman of the Second Battalion of the Oxford and Bucks, killed by shell fire on the 16th of September at the first battle of the Aisne and buried in the nearby churchyard at La Soupir; the last, that of Frederick Hicks of the Royal Army Service Corps who died in Salisbury after being invalided home from the Western Front. Frederick is buried in the Plymouth Road Cemetery.
For many citizens of Tavistock this war memorial was to be the only place where relatives and friends could grieve the loss of their loved one, despite the fact that some had graves around the battlefields of the Great War and on commemorative monuments such as the wonderful Menin Gate and Thiepval memorials. Isolated graves of Tavistock’s fallen of the Great War are to be found in Niederzwehren and Hamburg in Germany, Salonika and Karasouli in Greece, Jerusalem and Ramleh in Israel, Baghdad and Basra in Iraq, Cairo in Egypt, Barrackpore in India, and Brisbane in Australia, as well as seventeen graves in Britain, one in Ebrington, one in Lambeth, and others at home, in Gulworthy churchyard or Tavistock’s Plymouth Road Cemetery. Of those commemorated on our memorial, eighty-five were in the British Army, one third of which had no known grave, six were members of Canadian forces and one fought in the Indian Army, three Royal Marines, nineteen Royal Navy personnel and two in the, then, infant Royal Flying Corps.
Whilst hostilities ended on 11 November 1918 the war memorial also records the deaths of one man who died in the ‘left-over’ war in Mesopotamia in modern Iraq in 1920 and of nine men who died of war related conditions in various parts of the United Kingdom. The Tavistock War memorial must also be fairly unique in recording a World War One ‘death’ for a man who died in 1964. These were, of course, predominantly young men. It is, however, misleading to follow the notion, often expounded, that they were little more than boys when they died. The youngest was sixteen, and there were eleven others who were still in their teens. There were, on the other hand, nine who were over forty, and the oldest was fifty-three. The average age at death was twenty-nine.
Families were informed of losses through official channels, telegrams, or letters, although on occasions they received the news from the published lists that appeared in the press, predominantly in the Tavistock Gazette. Considerable efforts were made to ensure that more detailed, and personal letters were sent to wives and/or mothers from commanding officers, who were advised that, whatever else they wrote, they should give to the grieving family the confirmation that their loved ones had died instantaneously and had received a proper burial. The circumstances did not always make it easy for those assurances to be given. To ten Tavistock families the heartbreak occurred twice, in the case of one family, the Watts family of Morwellham, three times; the Hoskyns-Abrahall family were to lose a father and a son. For most of those who received these dreaded messages the prospect was a period of great hardship. For all of them there was the heartache and the sense of loss and waste. Today there likely remain none who personally were related to or knew any of those who fell, but for the present-day descendants, the pain, although dulled by time, and the pride, likely still persist. We who came later, and who take for granted the liberties that were hard won by the sacrifices of those who lost their lives in terrible and bloody conflict, should perhaps reflect that the debt we owe to the war dead and to their surviving dependents has never been fully paid.
The First World War, or Great War, was also heralded by some as ‘The War to end all Wars’. The Tavistock War Memorial is one of many such memorials to ‘Our Glorious Dead’ which remind us many years on of the stupidity of such phrases but which, at the same time, do reflect the town’s proud memories of those that fell, not only in World War One, but also in the worldwide conflict that followed some twenty years later and was to cost 60 million lives. The debt we owe to those who died, even one hundred years after the end of the Great War, is ably demonstrated by the large attendances at the town’s war memorial every Armistice Day. Our town memorial is truly a proud and significant reminder of the debt we owe to the Tavistock fallen.
Alex Mettler
On Sunday 11 November Alex Mettler will give a talk about the men of Tavistock who died in the First World War. For more information on the history and heritage of Tavistock please visit the Tavistock Heritage Trust website www.heritageintavistock.org.